FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – It’s been a little more than four years since Nikolas Cruz confessed to shooting and killing 17 Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school staff and students and wounding another 17. On Monday, the start to the process of selecting a death-qualified jury in the penalty phase of the capital case begins.
12 jurors will need to decide whether he should pay for the murders with his life. The judge indicated they will also be selecting 6-to-8 alternates.
Nearly 3,000 people have been sent a jury duty summons for the first week with the Parkland death penalty case getting first priority.
Legal analyst David Bogenschutz said he expects hundreds of prospective jurors to be excused on the first round for hardship or extreme inconvenience.
“The major problem is finding somebody who has the wherewithal and the interest to sit for what amounts to 16 consecutive weeks or more. This is going to be something that is going to take up a great deal of not just their work time and their ability to make a living; it is also going to take up a great deal of family time and personal time at home,” said Bogenschutz.
With guilt already established when Cruz entered guilty pleas to the court in October of last year. Jurors in this case will be asked if they can be fair and impartial when it comes to sentencing. In the coming days and weeks, as the selection process moves into upcoming phases, the state and defense will be drilling down on their death penalty views.
“If they say they can’t be fair, that door is closed. You have a right to burrow into it a little bit as a lawyer, but when a juror looks at you and says, ‘I cannot be fair in this case,’ that is hard to recover from,” said Bogenschutz.
With an order on Friday, the judge reaffirmed her decision to deny a defense request to refer to potential and seated jurors by number instead of by name.
Bogenschutz said: “People are human; they start thinking, ‘Well, if I vote this way and my name comes up, how I am going to deal with friends afterward? On my watch, I would not hesitate to give them numbers instead of names,” he said.