Lawyers: Cruz case being rushed
Parkland shooter’s attorneys say politics behind January trial
Prosecutors and a Broward judge are rushing the Parkland school shooting case to trial next month for political reasons, sacrificing the shooter’s constitutional rights in the process, according to his lawyers.
The defense has long promised to challenge an order from Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer setting a Jan. 27 date to start picking a jury in the case. Nikolas Cruz, 21, is accused of 17 counts of murder and 17 counts of attempted murder. A conviction on just one first-degree murder charge would subject him to a possible death penalty.
Avoiding the death penalty has been the defense’s main fomost
cus since soon after Cruz’s arrest Feb. 14, 2018. Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein, whose office represents him, has repeatedly said the defendant would plead guilty for an agreement not to seek death.
Earlier this week, the defense filed a 46-page motion asking Scherer to delay the trial and blaming politics for the January scheduling.
“The presiding judge in Mr. Cruz’s case is up for re-election in 2020,” the defense team wrote. “[Broward State Attorney Mike Satz] is urging this court to push the case to trial in order to end his 44-year career with a conviction and death penalty verdict on one of the
notorious defendants in Broward County.”
Satz was first elected in 1976 and announced earlier this year he would not be seeking re-election in 2020.
“Pushing this case to a premature trial in such a way as to run afoul of Mr. Cruz’s constitutional protections will only result in this case being reversed and remanded for a new trial based on error or ineffective assistance of counsel,” the defense team wrote.
In Broward, death penalty cases typically take four years or more before going to trial, although there have been exceptions. In one, some of the
same lawyers defending Cruz actually demanded a speedy trial. Jacqueline Luongo went before a jury 2½ years after the murder of her roommate in Deerfield Beach.
But Luongo’s case did not have nearly as many witnesses to question as in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. Defense lawyers say they have interviewed 141 so-called “A” witnesses and still need to interview more than 300 others before jury selection can even start.
In addition, the defense is waiting for a ruling from the Florida Supreme Court on whether it has to disclose the names of mental health experts who visit Cruz at the Broward Main Jail.
Scherer has ordered the release of jail visitor logs, but lawyers have told the judge they are concerned that releasing defense experts’ names might prematurely tip prosecutors to their trial strategy.
The motion implies that Cruz still has not been interviewed by those mental health experts, with seven weeks to go before the proposed start of jury selection.
A spokeswoman for the State Attorney’s Office said two years is a reasonable amount of time to prepare for the trial. Satz asked the judge to set a hearing date on the defense motion as soon as possible. “We just can’t wait until the last minute,” he said.
Scherer agreed and set the hearing for Dec. 19. “It’s better to have it sooner rather than later,” she said.