Parkland school shooter trial jury asks to see rifle used in attack on day one of deliberations
FORT LAUDERDALE - The jury in the penalty trial of Parkland school gunman Nikolas Cruz will resume deliberations on Thursday.
On Wednesday, they had questions as they considered whether to recommend life in prison without the possibility of parole or a death sentence.
Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty last year to the murders of 14 students and three staff members at Parkland's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14th, 2018. The trial has only been to determine his sentence.
They deliberated for about six hours Wednesday, including asking to have read back to them the prosecution's cross-examination of a defense psychologist Dr. Paul Connor who said Cruz suffers from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. They also asked for a read back of Dr. Robert Denny's testimony, he was the neuropsychologist who interviewed Cruz in jail.
After hearing Connor's testimony, jurors decided not to hear Denney's again.
Late in the day, they asked to examine Cruz's AR-15 rifle. That led to an exchange between the prosecution and Judge Elizabeth Scherer. The prosecution objected to it being shown in open court and said it should be brought to the jury room.
"Judge I tried I can't tell you how many cases and the gun has always gone back. This is just ridiculous, that's all I'm saying," said prosecutor Mike Satz.
The sheriff's office did not have the proper safety equipment to make that happen, so the issue will be resolved on Thursday.
The seven-man, five-woman panel can go through all the evidence, pictures, videos, and witness testimony to help them better make a decision.
They have no time limit to decide.
The jury is sequestered, staying at an undisclosed hotel with no cell phones and no television. Jurors are allowed one phone call a day and that will be monitored by a law enforcement officer.
The jurors will be voting 17 times - once for each victim. For the jurors to recommend a death sentence for a specific victim, they first must unanimously agree that the prosecution proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the killing involved at least one aggravating circumstance as proscribed under Florida law.
This part should not be difficult - the listed aggravating circumstances include knowingly creating a great risk of death to numerous people, committing murders that were "especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel" or committed in a "cold, calculated, and premeditated manner." They then must unanimously agree that the aggravating factors warrant consideration of the death penalty.
They then must determine whether the aggravating circumstances "outweigh" the mitigating factors that the defense argued such as his birth mother's drinking, his adoptive mother's alleged failure to get him proper psychiatric care and his admission of guilt.
If they do, the jurors can then recommend a death sentence - but that's not required. A juror can ignore the weighing exercise and vote for life out of mercy for Cruz.
A death sentence recommendation requires a unanimous vote on at least one victim. If one or more jurors vote for life on all victims, that will be his sentence.
If the jury cannot unanimously agree that Cruz should be executed for at least one victim, he will be sentenced to life without parole - Scherer cannot overrule the jury. She could sentence him immediately or schedule a future hearing.
After he is sentenced, the Florida Department of Corrections would assign him to a maximum security prison where he would be part of the general population. McNeill, in her closing argument, alluded that could be an exceedingly dangerous place for someone like Cruz.