Prosecutors filed a motion Thursday evening to interview a juror in Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz’s death-penalty trial after someone on the panel called the state attorney’s office in the wake of the shock verdict to claim they had been threatened by another juror.
The jury left victims’ parents shocked and angry on Thursday when they decided to spare Cruz’s life, instead sentencing him to life in prison without parole for killing 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.
But a juror, referred to in a new court filing only as “Juror X,” put in the call just after they were dismissed on Thursday and requested to speak with Assistant State Attorney Michael Satz, the trial’s lead prosecutor.
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The motion says a juror told a support staff member that “she received what she perceived to be a threat from a fellow juror while in the jury room” during deliberations. The motion says the state attorney’s office did not return the juror’s call, but instead filed a notice to the court.
Separately, a letter penned to Judge Elizabeth Scherer was added to the public record late Thursday, providing further insight into the “tense” deliberations.
That letter, written by one of the three jurors who voted for a life sentence (a unanimous decision was needed for Cruz to be executed), says she was initially the lone holdout against the death penalty. She also claims she was wrongly accused by other jurors of saying she’d made up her mind to vote against the death penalty even before the trial began.
“This allegation is untrue and I maintained my oath to the court that I would be fair and unbiased,” the letter says. “The deliberations were very tense and some jurors became extremely unhappy once I mentioned that I would vote for life.”
Two jurors were named in the letter—its author and a separate juror who she says overheard other jurors accusing her of bias—but The Daily Beast is not naming either without their permission.
Some of the letter's details corroborate what the jury foreman, Benjamin Thomas, told CBS Miami after Thursday’s trial. He said that there was just one staunch holdout who said she’d never vote to execute Cruz because she believed him to be mentally ill and that two others ended up joining the woman in voting “no” to execution on Thursday.
At a hearing for the motion on Friday afternoon, Scherer said that the juror who wrote the letter was not the same juror who led to the prosecutors’ motion being filed.
Prosecutor Carolyn McCann repeatedly said during the hearing that the state didn’t plan to use the alleged threat to push for a mistrial.
“Frankly, we don’t want to touch this with a ten-foot pole,” she said.
Instead, she said prosecutors filed the motion because it was a “safety issue” that warranted investigation, and it was necessary for future jurors to feel safe while serving.
Scherer agreed that the motion wasn’t enough to challenge Thursday’s verdict, and essentially ruled that it was out of her hands and up to the Broward County Sheriff's Office to investigate.
The judge also detailed a breach in communication between her and the juror who later contacted prosecutors, saying there were two jurors who wanted to speak with her after Thursday’s decision, but she waived them away because it wouldn't “be appropriate.”
Still, one of those jurors asked Scherer if there was a complaint form he could fill out. Scherer said she thought it was for “parking or having to wait so long,” and not because he wanted to report a threat in the jury room, so she waived him off again.
Only after the motion was filed, Scherer said, was she told that the juror who asked for the complaint form had been asking to speak to her before the verdict was read out, but word never reached her. The bailiffs monitoring the courtroom kept him away from Scherer so he couldn’t interrupt her, she said.
“He tried to get my attention in court, I didn’t see him, and he asked to speak to me, from what I understand, a couple of times,” Scherer said.
She said she would not order the Broward County Sheriff’s Office to investigate the alleged threat in the jury room, but said it’s in their jurisdiction to do so if they deem it credible, distancing herself from the situation.
A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office said Friday afternoon that deputies are investigating the incident.
