The Florida Judge who gained a national profile while presiding over the Parkland school shooting trial announced Wednesday that she is resigning June 30 to pursue unspecified career opportunities.
In a televised penalty trial, circuit judge Elizabeth Scherer oversaw the trial of Nikolas Cruz. Last year, he received a life sentence after a divided jury was unable to agree on the death penalty for the 2018 mass killing of 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
It has been a privilege to serve the people of the State of Florida for over 10 years, Scherer said in a letter to the governor. Court TV first reported the resignation in a statement.
In 2012, Scherer, a 46-year-old former Prosecutor, was appointed to the bench. The computerized system assigned Cruz's name shortly after the shooting, Broward County's county sheriff's office said. It was her second murder trial and the first slaying.
Her handling of the case was greeted with widespread praise from the parents and spouses of the victims, who said she treated them with professionalism and kindness, but her clashes with Cruz's lawyers and others sometimes drew criticism from legal observers.
Before the trial, she criticized two Sun Sentinel reporters for publishing a sealed Cruz educational record that they obtained legally. She threatened to tell the paper what it could and couldn t print but never did, and legal experts say such a move would have been unconstitutional.
During the interview, Scherer had frequent heated discussions with Cruz's leading public defender, Melisa McNeill. When McNeill and her team suddenly resumed their case after calling only a small fraction of their expected witnesses, they boiled over for the first time. Scherer called it a 'the most uncalled for, unprofessional' way to try a case, although the defense has no obligation to call all of its witnesses or announce its plans in advance.
McNeill countered angrily, You are insulting me on the record in front of my client, before Scherer told her to stop. You've been insulting me the entire trial, Scherer barked at McNeill. Arguing with me, storming out, coming late intentionally if you don t like my rulings. This has been overdue for some time now, he wrote in a statement. The two clashed again in November during Cruz's sentencing hearing in November over the verbal attacks some victims family members made against the defense team during their courtroom statements. Scherer refused to curtail the statement and ejected one of McNeill's assistants after he complained.
After sentencing Cruz to life without parole, Scherer left the bench and hugged members of the prosecution and the victims' families.
The Florida Supreme Court yesterday removed Tundidor from overseeing post-conviction motions of another defendant, Randy Tundidor, who was sentenced to death for murder in the April 2019 killing of his landlord. One of the prosecutors in the case had also been on the Cruz team, and during a hearing in the Tundidor case a few days after the Cruz sentencing, Scherer asked the prosecutor how he was holding up.
The court said the actions of Scherer were at least the appearance that she could not be fair to Tundidor.