Less than 24 hours after a South Florida jury recommend a life sentence for Nikolas Cruz, the judge in the case, Elizabeth Scherer, said she was leaving an investigation into the complaint that one juror pressured another during the seven hours of deliberations at the discretion of the police forces.
Prosecutors placed the issue before the judge on Friday after an (unidentified) juror filed the complaint. “I am not going to order them to do an investigation. But I think they should if they think it’s justified,” the judge said.
The prosecution does not seem very enthusiastic about the prospects either. “Frankly, I don’t want to dwell on this too much because we know the defense will jump in and say we’re trying to undermine the verdict, which we’re not trying to do. The only reason we are doing this is that we cannot ignore a security issue,” the prosecution said in a letter to the judge.
The name of the jury has not been made public. Prosecutors asked permission to provide the sheriff’s office with the name of the jury. There were no objections. The jury called prosecutors on Thursday after its decision was read in court, ABC affiliate Local 10 said.
“Juror X spoke with a support staff member and informed him that during deliberations she received what she perceived to be a threat from a fellow juror while in the jury room,” the prosecution said. “The State did not recall the X jury and instead filed a notice with the court.”
On Friday afternoon, a spokeswoman for the Department of Florida and another of the sheriffs who take care of the security of a trial, told OnCuba that they have not yet received any communication from Judge Scherer.
This incident is the latest hint of behind-the-scenes tension within the jury. His verdict angered the families of some victims.
A second juror wrote a letter to the judge calling the deliberations “tense” and saying that some members of the group were “extremely unhappy” when the jury mentioned that it would vote for life in prison. And in an interview, its president described the disagreement among its members, saying that three of the 12 members opposed the death penalty.
The juror who reported the perceived threat is different from the one who wrote the letter to the judge, according to Assistant State’s Attorney Carolyn McCann, Local 10 reported.
Cruz admitted to killing 14 students and three school staff members on February 14, 2018, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
Because he pleaded guilty to all counts, 17 to murder and 17 to attempted murder, he skipped the trial phase and the court went directly to the sentencing phase. Still, the hearings took just over three weeks, including the jury selection period.
