FORT LAUDERDALE – The jury in the penalty trial of Parkland school gunman Nikolas Cruz will resume deliberations on Thursday.
On Wednesday, they experienced queries as they considered regardless of whether to recommend daily life in jail without the chance of parole or a demise sentence.
Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty very last yr to the murders of 14 learners and 3 employees users at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas Superior University on February 14th, 2018. The demo has only been to determine his sentence.
They deliberated for about six hours Wednesday, including inquiring to have read through again to them the prosecution’s cross-examination of a protection psychologist Dr. Paul Connor who claimed Cruz suffers from fetal alcoholic beverages spectrum dysfunction. They also requested for a go through again of Dr. Robert Denny’s testimony, he was the neuropsychologist who interviewed Cruz in jail.
Immediately after listening to Connor’s testimony, jurors made the decision not to listen to Denney’s again.
Late in the day, they requested to analyze Cruz’s AR-15 rifle. That led to an exchange in between the prosecution and Decide Elizabeth Scherer. The prosecution objected to it getting shown in open up court docket and claimed it should really be introduced to the jury area.
“Decide I tried using I are not able to notify you how a lot of instances and the gun has generally long gone back again. This is just ridiculous, that is all I am declaring,” said prosecutor Mike Satz.
The sheriff’s business did not have the suitable security machines to make that materialize, so the situation will be fixed on Thursday.
The seven-guy, five-woman panel can go through all the proof, shots, video clips, and witness testimony to assistance them far better make a determination.
They have no time restrict to determine.
The jury is sequestered, staying at an undisclosed lodge with no mobile telephones and no television. Jurors are permitted 1 cell phone get in touch with a day and that will be monitored by a regulation enforcement officer.
The jurors will be voting 17 times – the moment for every single victim. For the jurors to propose a demise sentence for a certain sufferer, they 1st ought to unanimously concur that the prosecution proved outside of a realistic question that the killing associated at the very least just one aggravating circumstance as proscribed underneath Florida legislation.
This part should not be hard – the shown aggravating conditions contain knowingly creating a fantastic hazard of loss of life to a lot of people today, committing murders that ended up “primarily heinous, atrocious, or cruel” or fully commited in a “cold, calculated, and premeditated manner.” They then ought to unanimously agree that the aggravating factors warrant thought of the loss of life penalty.
They then have to decide no matter whether the aggravating conditions “outweigh” the mitigating aspects that the protection argued these kinds of as his start mother’s drinking, his adoptive mother’s alleged failure to get him good psychiatric treatment and his admission of guilt.
If they do, the jurors can then suggest a demise sentence – but that’s not needed. A juror can dismiss the weighing workout and vote for everyday living out of mercy for Cruz.
A dying sentence suggestion demands a unanimous vote on at minimum a person target. If just one or far more jurors vote for daily life on all victims, that will be his sentence.
If the jury are unable to unanimously agree that Cruz should be executed for at the very least just one target, he will be sentenced to life with no parole – Scherer simply cannot overrule the jury. She could sentence him quickly or routine a potential hearing.
Immediately after he is sentenced, the Florida Office of Corrections would assign him to a optimum protection prison exactly where he would be component of the general population. McNeill, in her closing argument, alluded that could be an exceedingly dangerous position for an individual like Cruz.
