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.
