Judge rules that jury selection must start over in trial of Parkland gunman Nikolas Cruz
Nikolas Cruz murdered 17 people and wounded 17 others in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
A Florida judge has ruled that jury selection in the trial of Parkland gunman Nikolas Cruz must start again from scratch, scrapping two weeks worth of court proceedings and dismissing 250 potential jurors.
Broward County Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer announced on Monday morning that the jury selection will start over as she admitted that she had personally made mistakes in the process.
The judge said that she should have questioned 11 potential jurors who told the court that they would not follow the law if selected to sit on the panel determining the fate of the mass murderer before she dismissed them.
Initially, the 11 dismissed jurors were expected to be called back to court on Monday so that both the prosecution and the defence could question them over their comments.
Judge Scherer told the court on Monday morning that there had been a “miscommunication” and the group would instead be back in court next week.
Prosecutors filed a motion asking the judge to strike all potential jurors and restart the process altogether, citing what they described as “not a harmless error” in proceedings to date.
Cruz’s legal team objected to the motion, but the judge agreed with the prosecution, restarting the jury selection and effectively wiping out two weeks of work in the case.
More than 1,200 potential jurors had been screened and around 250 of them had said they could sit for a roughly four-month trial.
Now, this group will no longer be called back for questioning and a new pool of jurors will be screened.
This marks the latest upheaval to plague the trial after the misstep with the 11 jurors fuelled the possibility of a mistrial being declared.
The start date for the trial is now likely to be delayed once again, after it was already pushed back from May to June.
Cruz murdered 17 people and wounded 17 others in the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
On 14 February 2018, the former student at the school, then 19, opened fire killing 14 students and three staff members before fleeing the scene in what remains the deadliest high school shooting in American history.
In October, the 23-year-old pleaded guilty to 17 counts of premeditated first-degree murder and 17 counts of attempted first-degree murder.
The trial will now decide if he is sentenced to death or life without the possibility of parole. Jurors must agree unanimously to the death penalty.