Judge assigned case by chance
Arbiter of shooter’s trial selected by computer program
Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer was assigned the case of a former Florida student who gunned down 17 people in 2018 despite never having overseen a death penalty trial or one with much publicity.
Her assignment to the Nikolas Cruz case was made randomly by a computer program that didn’t consider experience or the fact that no U.S. mass shooting of this magnitude had ever made it to court. The random selection process is used throughout much of Florida, but not by some other states.
Jury selection is now underway in Cruz’s penalty trial for the massacre of 14 students and three adults at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
Cruz, 23, pleaded guilty in October to 17 counts of first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted murder for the attack on Valentine’s Day 2018. The 12-member jury that is eventually chosen will decide whether aggravating factors such as the number of victims and Cruz’s planning and cruelty outweigh such mitigating factors as his lifelong mental and emotional problems, his possible sexual abuse and his parents’ deaths.
The computer that manages Broward County’s criminal cases assigned Cruz to Scherer shortly after the shootings. The system makes sure judges have caseloads of generally equal size and complexity, but otherwise doles out cases randomly. It also prevents the possibility of cases being assigned to specific judges to get a preferred outcome.