FORT LAUDERDALE – A listening to will be held Friday afternoon after prosecutors in the sentencing trial of Parkland college gunman Nikolas Cruz submitted a movement for an investigation after a juror mentioned she felt threatened by another member of the jury for the duration of deliberations.
The movement phone calls for legislation enforcement to job interview the unnamed juror soon after she instructed the condition attorney’s workplace that “she perceived to be a risk from a fellow juror even though in the jury area.” No further aspects were being provided.
Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty a year back to murdering 14 learners and three staff members members and wounding 17 other folks, at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas Substantial College on Feb. 14, 2018.
A divided jury spared Cruz the death penalty and alternatively made the decision to send him to prison for the rest of his everyday living in a decision that remaining quite a few people of the victims angered, baffled, and in tears.
Direct public defender, Melisa McNeill, informed the jury throughout her closing argument Tuesday that existence in jail would still be a horrible punishment and suggested that other prisoners may possibly goal him.
But that wasn’t enough for lots of spouse and children customers, who went ahead of television cameras, just one by just one, to categorical their shock and anger at the jury’s conclusion. Some known as Cruz a “monster,” though some others cried.
Less than Florida law, a demise sentence needs a unanimous vote on at the very least just one count. The seven-person, five-woman jury unanimously agreed there had been aggravating components to warrant a possible loss of life sentence, this kind of as agreeing that the murders were “primarily heinous, atrocious, or cruel.”
In the course of their deliberations, the jury asked for to see the rifle Cruz employed in the assault, it was brought to the jury room.
“We asked for to bring it in to demonstrate to some jurors the ability demanded to assemble the elements added and to use the weapon,” said jury foreman Benjamin Thomas.
There was speculation that the weapon was introduced in to enable modify the minds of those wanting to clearly show Cruz mercy.
Just one or a lot more jurors, nonetheless, caught to the mitigating things, these as untreated childhood difficulties. In the stop, the jury could not concur that the aggravating components outweighed the mitigating types, so Cruz will get lifestyle without having parole. Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer will formally concern the existence sentences November 1. Relations, along with the learners and instructors Cruz wounded, will be specified the option to talk.
The jurors pledged through the variety course of action that they could vote for a demise sentence, but some victims’ mom and dad, some of whom attended the trial just about each day, wondered regardless of whether all of them have been staying sincere.
Juror Denise Cunha sent a short handwritten be aware to the choose Thursday defending her vote for a life sentence and denying she supposed to vote that way ahead of the trial started.
“The deliberations had been really tense and some jurors became incredibly sad when I described that I would vote for lifestyle,” Cunha wrote.
She did not demonstrate her vote and it is mysterious if she is the juror who complained to the point out attorney’s office.
Jury foreman Benjamin Thomas instructed local reporters that 3 jurors voted for lifestyle on the final ballot. Two were keen to rethink, but 1 was a “difficult no” for the dying penalty.
“It really arrived down to a distinct (juror) that he (Cruz) was mentally ill,” Thomas explained. He did not say irrespective of whether that person was Cunha.
