FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The trial of the man who confessed to murdering 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 will begin on July 18, the judge in the case said Wednesday.
Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer has been repeatedly stymied in her effort to bring the case of Nikolas Cruz to trial. But Scherer, prosecutors and defense lawyers finished up jury selection Wednesday morning, and all that’s left is a final round of pretrial hearings scheduled between now and the middle of the month.
The case, which is solely about whether the gunman deserves execution for the 17 Parkland murders, has seen no shortage of anticipated and unanticipated delays, and hours before the beginning of those hearings, lawyers on both sides warned Scherer that pretrial scheduling issues remain a challenge.
The final jury panel consists of seven men and five women. Ten additional jurors were selected as alternates, who will step in if any of the original 12 are unable to finish the trial. Of the 10 alternates, nine are women. They are diverse in race and ethnicity, age and economic background.
All said they could put aside what they know about the case in order to be fair. All said they could vote for life in prison instead if the defense presents compelling mitigating factors. All said they would be willing to serve as foreperson and sign their names to the verdict form if the jury agrees to a death sentence.
They were sworn in Wednesday afternoon.
As of now, the trial is anticipated to last four months, which would take it into November.
Assistant State Attorney Mike Satz and his team are tasked with convincing the jury to impose 17 separate death sentence, one for each victim gunned down in the halls and classrooms of the high school’s freshman building on Valentine’s Day 2018.
Jurors will hear from each victim’s family. They will see photographs of the victims as they lived and as they died. They will see surveillance video of the shootings. They will hear from survivors, some of whom were wounded by gunfire. They will hear from witnesses who watched their friends die.
Assistant Public Defender Melisa McNeill and the defense team will present the mitigating factors, details about the defendant’s life that, without excusing him for committing the crime, demonstrate that he doesn’t deserve to die. Mental health issues are expected to play a major role in the defense, but attorneys have disclosed little about their overall strategy.
The deck is, by legal design, stacked against the prosecution. Jurors must find unanimously and beyond a reasonable doubt that aggravating factors exist and that they outweigh any mitigating factors (which do not need to meet the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard). It only takes one dissenting juror to take the death penalty off the table. Even if the jury makes those findings, it still has to be unanimous in recommending the death sentence. Again, it only takes one dissenting juror to eliminate death as an option.
But in one regard, the deck is stacked against the defense. The process, weighing aggravators against mitigators and arriving at a recommendation, has to be repeated 17 times, once for each victim. If the verdict is unanimous and the recommendation is death one time, Cruz can be sent to death row, regardless of the recommendation in the 16 other murder cases.
If the jury recommends death, the final sentencing is left to the judge, who still has the discretion to override a death recommendation. That usually takes place after additional post-trial hearings, which can be scheduled weeks to months after the jury’s verdict is reached.
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