What to expect at trial

It likely would take three years to get to trial, the first step in a journey that would cost many millions of dollars. Satz’s office has requested an extra $5 million to prosecute the case, Finkelstein says. His office has requested a couple of million dollars.

Finkelstein fears the trial would tear our community apart. Rather than working together to ensure this never happens again, he expects finger-pointing to heighten between the Broward Sheriff ’s Office, Broward County Public Schools, Henderson Behavioral Health and the state and federal governments.

After months of emotional testimony and horrific images, he says the jury would find Cruz guilty. But the defense team would have planted seeds in the jurors’ minds that although their client is responsible for his acts, the state lacks clean hands to kill him, having ignored every opportunity to help him.

“When it comes time, human beings take very seriously the question of life and death,” Finkelstein says. “And in this case, it’s going to be a very difficult situation because while this is as horrible a crime as you could possibly commit, on the other side, why did nobody do anything?”

Because Florida’s new death penalty law requires the jury’s decision to be unanimous, it would take only one of 12 jurors to upend the reason for the three-year journey. That’s what happened in Aurora, Colorado, after a jury unanimously found James Holmes guilty of killing 12 people in a movie theater. Later, three of those same jurors couldn’t vote for death. “He knew right from wrong,” one juror told the Denver Post. “It’s the fact that mental illness is there.”