FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The judge in the Parkland mass shooting trial has screened more than 1,200 potential jurors to decide the fate of confessed gunman Nikolas Cruz, focusing on a single question — who has time to sit on a four-month trial without suffering some kind of hardship, financial or otherwise?
Using that single criterion, Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer narrowed the field of potential jurors to nearly 250 in six days. She’s hoping to add 100 more before moving on to the second phase of jury selection, where things will get interesting.
Jurors who head into the second phase each receive a 15-page form containing 73 questions. Using them, prosecutors will try to weed out anyone so philosophically opposed to the death penalty that they would never vote to impose it under any circumstances. Defense lawyers will try to eliminate anyone who is already convinced the defendant does not deserve to live, trying to find at least one juror who is likely to vote for life in prison instead of death.
And Scherer will look for a jury that will follow the law and reach a decision that will be upheld by appeals courts who are bound to scrutinize every decision made at every stage of the proceedings in Florida v. Nikolas Cruz.
Most of the 73 questions are routine. Lawyers on both sides want to know whether the jurors are single or married, whether they have children, and how much formal education they have.
But in a case like this one, where the defendant admits gunning down 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in a crime that permanently scarred the local community and prompted a national gun reform movement, no question or answer is routine.
“With a lot of questions, there are two ways to interpret the answer. One might be favorable to the defense; the other to the prosecution,” said defense lawyer Joe Nascimento, who is not involved in the Cruz case but was on the team that defended former death row inmate Pablo Ibar at his Broward retrial in 2018-2019.
Parents might sympathize with the families of the children slain at the Parkland high school. Foster parents and adoptive parents might have a different outlook. “I would want a foster parent on my jury,” Nascimento said. “If you’re fostering, you have experience with a kid who’s been through trauma, as Cruz had growing up.”
Prosecutors will look to rehabilitate jurors who show too much willingness to execute Cruz by getting them to commit to considering the defense argument and mitigating factors, along with the possibility of life imprisonment instead of death. Defense lawyers will do the opposite — get jurors who express opposition to the death penalty to say they will follow the law and consider voting for death if that’s where the evidence leads.
But while prosecutors need all 12 selected jurors to vote for death, the defense needs only one to vote for life.
Retired prosecutor Brian Cavanagh, who ran the Broward State Attorney’s homicide unit from 2006-2016, said the questions about education are a springboard for a larger discussion about intelligence. “Ideally, I want the smartest jury possible. Education is a component of that conversation, but it’s not the same as intelligence,” he said. “I want smart, savvy people who can see through B.S. and not be swayed by smoke and mirrors.”
Higher education can work for the defense, too, Nascimento said. Such jurors are more likely to grasp the nuances of the arguments about the defendant’s mental health and emotional stability, and that would make them more open to vote no on the death penalty.
Each juror is also being asked how much they know about the Stoneman Douglas case. Scherer is telling every juror in the first phase of selection that knowing about the shooting will not be enough to disqualify them from serving. Some jurors already have been disqualified because they volunteered that they know Cruz or the victims, or that they could never vote for death. Others have been excused because they were emotionally troubled just being in the same room with the defendant.
The additional questions, Cavanagh said, will help attorneys and the judge winnow out those who cannot serve because of bias.
“We want to know if they have views that substantially impair their ability to perform the task at hand,” he said. “Will their views prevent or impair them from following the law?”
The first phase of jury selection resumes Monday.
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