Jury Selection Chaos and Confusion Causes Further Delays in Parkland Shooting Capital Sentencing Trial

The cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing tri­al of Nikolas Cruz in the 2018 mass shoot­ing at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (pic­tured) in Parkland, Florida has been delayed once again as jury selec­tion in the high-pro­file case devolved into chaos and confusion. 

The fourth week of jury selec­tion in Cruz’s penal­ty tri­al was post­poned after Broward County Judge Elizabeth Scherer grant­ed a pros­e­cu­tion motion to restart jury selec­tion based upon the improp­er removal of 11 jurors from the case, then lat­er reversed her deci­sion and ordered the jurors to be recalled for addi­tion­al ques­tion­ing. Separately, a pan­el of jurors had to be removed from the cour­t­house after one of them threat­ened the defendant.

When the court recon­vened on May 2, 2022, jury ques­tion­ing was put off for anoth­er week as a result of an appar­ent med­ical issue involv­ing one of Cruz’s lawyers. 

The Jury Selection in Cruz’s Case

Cruz plead­ed guilty in October 2021 to 17 counts of mur­der and 17 counts of attempt­ed mur­der in the Parkland shoot­ing. Prosecutors reject­ed a 2019 offer for Cruz to plead guilty and be sen­tenced to 34 con­sec­u­tive life sen­tences, instead choos­ing to pur­sue a death sen­tence. After a lengthy delay due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, the process to select a jury to deter­mine Cruz’s sen­tence began on April 4, 2022.

During the sec­ond day of jury selec­tion, Judge Scherer struck 11 jurors from the case who said that they had beliefs about the death penal­ty that would pre­vent them from impos­ing the death penal­ty, with­out allow­ing lawyers for the pros­e­cu­tion or the defense to ques­tion them as to whether they could set aside those beliefs and fol­low the law. In what media reports described as ​“a tense exchange,” pub­lic defend­er Melisa McNeill request­ed 24 hours to decide whether to file a motion for a mis­tri­al based on the rul­ing. ​“No, I will give you 5 or 10 min­utes,” Scherer replied. ​“You are going to give me 5 or 10 min­utes to make a deci­sion about whether I want to file, ask for a mis­tri­al in a 17 count cap­i­tal mur­der case?,” McNeill asked.

Ultimately, Scherer recessed the pro­ceed­ings for the day and when jury selec­tion resumed, the defense said it would not be fil­ing for a mis­tri­al. However, fear­ing that the court’s rul­ing could con­sti­tute reversible error, the pros­e­cu­tion filed a motion seek­ing a retri­al, say­ing that jury selec­tion should ​“start fresh.” On April 25, Judge Scherer admit­ted that she had improp­er­ly removed the jurors and grant­ed the prosecution’s motion, dis­miss­ing 243 prospec­tive jurors who had already been found qual­i­fied to be part of a small­er pool of jurors from which the jury would be empan­eled. However, two days lat­er, on April 27, she reversed her deci­sion after the defense argued that the mis­tri­al rul­ing vio­lat­ed the dou­ble jeop­ardy pro­tec­tions of the U.S. con­sti­tu­tion and required that Cruz be sen­tenced to life. Instead, Scherer rein­stat­ed the 243 prospec­tive jurors and ordered that the 11 jurors she had ini­tial­ly excused be brought back to court for additional questioning.

While that issue was still being resolved, an entire pan­el of 70 poten­tial jurors was dis­missed on April 26 after sev­er­al jurors appeared to have threat­ened Cruz. According to court per­son­nel, the inci­dent began when one male juror was seen ​“mouthing exple­tives” toward Cruz. Other jurors then began to be ​“bel­liger­ent,” bailiffs said. Officers assigned to pro­vide secu­ri­ty in the court­room then over­heard one juror threat­en­ing Cruz. When the first juror turned toward Cruz and appeared to be prepar­ing to run toward him, the offi­cers sur­round­ed Cruz and moved him away from the jurors. After con­fer­ring with the lawyers for the pros­e­cu­tion and the defense, Judge Scherer dis­missed the entire pan­el. Sheriff’s deputies escort­ed the jurors out of the cour­t­house to ensure they did not speak to oth­er poten­tial jurors who were waiting outside.

Further ques­tion­ing of the 243 jurors was sched­uled to resume on May 2, but McNeill and one pros­e­cu­tion lawyer were not present. The Palm Beach Post report­ed that Judge Scherer ​“was heard ask­ing one of Cruz’s oth­er attor­neys if McNeill was being ​‘test­ed,’” and court was recessed until May 9 amid the appar­ent health concerns. 

Disruptions con­tin­ue to fur­ther delay the sen­tenc­ing tri­al, which — after a series of ear­li­er delays — had been sched­uled to begin in mid-June. Once the pro­ceed­ing gets under­way, the sen­tenc­ing tri­al is expect­ed to last four to six months.

When Cruz ini­tial­ly offered to plead guilty in exchange for life sen­tences, the father of one of the shoot­ing vic­tims wrote that pur­su­ing the death penal­ty would case unnec­es­sary pain to the com­mu­ni­ty. In an op-ed in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Michael Schulman, father of geog­ra­phy teacher and track coach Scott Beigel, wrote that he believes the shoot­er deserves the death penal­ty but ​“put[ting] the stu­dents and fac­ul­ty through the trau­ma of reliv­ing that hor­ri­ble day is cru­el and unnecessary.”

“‘Going for the death penal­ty,’” Schulman wrote, ​“will not bring our loved ones back to us. It will not make the phys­i­cal scars of those wound­ed go away. In fact, what it will do is to con­tin­ue the trau­ma and not allow the vic­tims to heal and get closure.”

When he plead­ed guilty to the shoot­ing, Cruz told the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, ​“I am very sor­ry for what I did, and I have to live with it every day. If I were to get a sec­ond chance, I would do every­thing in my pow­er to try to help oth­ers. I am doing this for you, and I do not care if you do not believe me. … I have to live with this every day, and it brings me night­mares and I can’t live with myself sometimes ….”

The Death Penalty in Broward County

At the end of 2012, Broward County had 23 peo­ple on death row or fac­ing cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing tri­als, mak­ing it among the 1% most pop­u­lous coun­ty death rows in the nation. Broward judges have imposed three more death sen­tences since then. A Death Penalty Information Center review of death sen­tences nation­wide has found that only 0.5% of U.S. coun­ties imposed more death sen­tences dur­ing that period.

Currently, Broward County has five death penal­ty cas­es await­ing tri­als or sen­tenc­ings. They include Cruz’s penal­ty-phase tri­al; the cap­i­tal tri­al of Jamell Demons (known as the rap­per, YNW Melly); the cap­i­tal tri­als of co-defen­dants Richard Andres and Jonathan Gordon; and the retri­al of Peter Avsenew, whose 2018 con­vic­tion and death sen­tence were over­turned in January 2022 because of the improp­er pre­sen­ta­tion of remote­ly-record­ed tes­ti­mo­ny. The cas­es, most have which had been delayed because of the pan­dem­ic, threat­en to swamp the county’s court system.