Jury panel dismissed in Parkland case

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — A judge dismissed an entire panel of 60 jurors Monday afternoon after too many became visibly upset at the prospect of deciding whether to recommend life in prison or death for the Parkland mass shooter.

Eight potential jurors — seven women and one man — were escorted from the courtroom when they could not contain their emotional reaction on learning they might be picked to serve on the Marjory Stoneman Douglas shooting case.

With confessed killer Nikolas Cruz in the same courtroom, just a few yards away, one prospective juror after another left in tears. The first woman to leave could be heard crying as soon as she left the courtroom. Subsequent potential jurors held back tears or sniffled with their faces distraught.

Cruz appeared to have an emotional response to the display, dropping his head and looking away from the panel momentarily before facing them again.

Judge Elizabeth Scherer said she would dismiss the pool of 60 jurors, who still could be used in other trials, and start fresh. The raw emotion had tainted the jury pool, she said.

While this was not the first time potential jurors let their emotions get the best of them in Cruz’s presence, it was the most extreme case. Before Tuesday afternoon, Scherer was able to keep the process moving by having emotional jurors removed and questioned later in the day, outside the presence of other jurors.

Before the stricken panel, Scherer and lawyers were able to get through one panel of 60 jurors in the morning and another 60 in the afternoon. A final panel of just 14 jurors closed out the day.

In all, about 136 potential jurors have survived the first phase of jury selection and are scheduled to return in May for additional questioning.

Jury selection is scheduled to run through next month, with trial testimony getting underway after Memorial Day, Scherer said.

Last fall, before he pleaded guilty to the 17 murders, Cruz was set to go on trial for assaulting a detention deputy who was guarding him at the Broward main jail.

That trial was set to begin last October, and a handful of potential jurors had similar emotional reactions to seeing Cruz, who later pleaded guilty to that charge as well.

(AP/South Florida Sun Sentinel/Amy Beth Bennett) Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz is seated at the defense table during jury pre-selection in the penalty phase of his trial Monday at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.