FORT LAUDERDALE – The remaining section of the sentencing trial of Parkland college shooter Nikolas Cruz is scheduled to get underway subsequent week.
Opening statements within the trial are set for Monday, July 18th.
CBS News Miami will stream the continuing from “gavel to gavel.”
The jury will resolve whether or not Cruz, 23, receives the dying sentence or life in jail with out parole for the murders of 14 college students and three employees members at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on February 14, 2018.
Cruz pleaded responsible in October to these murders and 17 counts of tried homicide, so the jurors will solely resolve his punishment. They have to be unanimous for Cruz to get the dying penalty – if a minimum of one votes for all times, that shall be Cruz’s sentence.
The jury choice course of took almost three months and commenced with 1,800 candidates. The choice had been anticipated to take a couple of month however was beset by quite a few delays due to illness and different components.
During the sentencing trial, the jurors shall be uncovered to graphic proof, together with crime scene and post-mortem pictures, and tour the three-story classroom constructing the place Cruz methodically stalked the halls, capturing at anybody in entrance of him and into lecture rooms. It has not been cleaned for the reason that capturing and stays bloodstained and bullet-pocked, with Valentine’s Day presents strewn about.
The panel could have a process by no means confronted by a U.S. jury – no American mass shooter who killed a minimum of 17 individuals has ever made it to trial. Nine others died throughout or instantly after their capturing assaults, killed both by police or themselves. The suspect within the 2019 slaying of 23 at a Walmart retailer in El Paso, Texas, is awaiting trial.
The sentencing trial is anticipated to final about 4 months.
