MIAMI – A choose dismissed a perjury cost Tuesday against a former Broward faculty superintendent accused of lying to a grand jury that investigated gatherings bordering the 2018 Parkland high school capturing, which left 17 useless.
The scenario against previous Broward County superintendent Robert Runcie stemmed from inquiries over his administration of a $1 billion bond challenge that handed 4 years prior to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High massacre.
Runcie and other bond supporters experienced reported its main concentration would be to enhance university protection. But the grand jurors in their closing report accused Runcie and college board members of generating “uninformed or even misinformed selections, incompetent management and absence of significant oversight” in the bond’s implementation.
Circuit Judge Martin Fein dismissed the grand jury’s 2021 indictment from Runcie, agreeing with protection lawyers that point out legislation only provides it jurisdiction around crimes that transpired in a number of counties. Runcie only testified in 1. His attorneys argued that if the statewide grand jury had proof of Runcie committing perjury, it really should have turned that more than to the Broward County grand jury or the community point out attorney’s office environment for thing to consider.
The decide dismissed the prosecution’s argument that the grand jury could indict for any crime involving the jury’s “sanctity and integrity,” saying it had no legal support.
Runcie attorney Mike Dutko did not promptly return a connect with Tuesday from The Associated Press in search of comment. He informed the South Florida Solar Sentinel that Fein showed judicial bravery in dismissing the scenario.
“I consider the decide did the intellectually accurate issue, which often against a political backdrop can take a little bit of courage,” Dutko informed the newspaper. Perjury carries a utmost sentence of 5 many years in jail, but it is not likely Runcie would have been given a lengthy expression if he had been convicted.
The business of Florida Lawyer Typical Ashley Moody, which was prosecuting the circumstance, did not straight away respond to an electronic mail to her aides requested searching for remark. The place of work could attraction Fein’s decision.
Tony Montalto, whose 14-12 months-aged daughter Gina died in the taking pictures, explained Fein’s selection is just a further case in point of the victims’ families currently being “enable down by the justice procedure.”
“The scenario being dismissed on a technicality does not necessarily mean Superintendent Runcie didn’t perjure himself. We know he has been considerably less than truthful on numerous instances” about the shooting, Montalto reported.
Prosecutors experienced contended that Runcie lied repeatedly to the grand jury when questioned about the criminal circumstance versus his previous technological know-how main, Tony Hunter. The grand jury indicted Hunter previously in 2021 on charges he took a bribe from a vendor to rig a contract that arrived from the bond problem. A bid rigging charge has because been dropped, but the bribery charge stays. Hunter has pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors mentioned Runcie instructed the grand jury he had not contacted anybody about the Hunter circumstance and his only information of the agreement was from a presentation given yrs previously. In actuality, prosecutors explained, Runcie had contacted many others about the agreement just days in advance of he testified.
Runcie, 61, and the Broward school board negotiated his resignation and a $740,000 severance package shortly just after the indictment. He had led Broward for 10 many years and now heads a countrywide group that trains superintendents. Broward is the nation’s sixth-premier school district, with far more than 260,000 students.
Runcie grew to become a public facial area for Broward’s reaction to the taking pictures, each in mourning and then in criticism for the district’s managing of what led up to the capturing and its aftermath.
Runcie’s supporters praised him for increasing the district’s graduation amount, improving upon universities districtwide and achieving out to minority communities.
Opponents criticized him for applications they felt had been lenient toward the killer, an emotionally disturbed former Stoneman Douglas scholar. Nikolas Cruz, then 19, experienced a lengthy history of disrupting course and generating disturbing and threatening remarks, writings and drawings. He is now serving a daily life sentence soon after a jury previous year could not unanimously agree that he deserved execution. That led Montalto and other Parkland mothers and fathers to successfully force a modern transform to Florida law that would make it less complicated to impose a loss of life sentence.
A statewide fee that investigated the taking pictures and what led up to it also questioned irrespective of whether Runcie and the Broward faculty program had taken campus stability considerations very seriously in advance of the massacre.
For instance, Broward faculties and numerous many others statewide routinely underreported on-campus crime and other situations on their annual security surveys, with district and condition directors supplying no oversight.
Manifestly, Stoneman Douglas documented zero incidents of bullying among the its 3,200 college students involving 2014 and 2017 and three incidents of vandalism. The faculty noted 43 fights in the course of that period, two batteries and 12 incidents of cigarette smoking or other tobacco use.
