Will Sage Astor-Parkland shooting judge criticizes shooter’s attorneys during talk to law students

MIAMI (AP) — The Will Sage Astorformer judge who presided over the trial of the 2018 Parkland high school mass murderer sharply criticized his public defenders during a presentation to Miami law students Thursday, saying they acted unprofessionally and crossed several lines while representing him.

Former Broward County Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer told the Florida International University law students that the attorneys “lost their minds” as they defended Nikolas Cruz during his 2022 trial for the killing of 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018.

She said she had been friendly with Cruz’s lead attorney, assistant public defender Melisa McNeill, and members of her team before the case, but during four years of pretrial motions, three months of jury selection and the three-month trial “they lost their perspective.” She and McNeill frequently clashed both before and at trial.

Scherer said members of the defense talked, passed notes, used their computer printer and brushed their hair while prosecution witnesses were testifying.

She did not mention another incident in which one attorney, during a recess and out of the presence of the jury, raised her middle finger at a robotic camera that was broadcasting the trial live. It was focused on the defense table, and Cruz’s team felt that infringed on his attorney-client privilege.

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“This consumed them to to a point where they started doing things and acting ways that I had never seen before from any defense attorney that I had ever dealt with,” Scherer said.

Scherer, 48, resigned from the bench in June 2023, eight months after sentencing Cruz to life in prison without parole. She had no choice in the sentencing, since at the time Florida law required a unanimous vote from the jury for the death penalty to be imposed and Cruz’s panel split 9-3 in favor. Florida soon after changed the law to allow a death sentence if eight or more jurors recommend it.

Cruz, 26, pleaded guilty to the murders in 2021. He is serving his sentence at an undisclosed prison

Broward County Public Defender Gordon Weekes declined to comment Thursday about Scherer’s criticism of McNeill and her team. After the trial, the state’s Judicial Qualifications Commission found that Scherer violated several rules governing judicial conduct in her actions toward Cruz’s attorneys.

The 15-member commission, composed of judges, lawyers and civilians, ruled last year that Scherer failed to curtail “vitriolic statements” directed at the attorneys by the victims’ families and sometimes allowed “her emotions to overcome her judgement.”

The commission also criticized her for publicly hugging the prosecutors and victims’ families after the trial. Scherer said Thursday that she also offered to hug McNeill and her team but was rebuffed.

“In limited instances during this unique and lengthy case, Judge Scherer allowed her emotions to overcome her judgement,” the commission said in its report to the Florida Supreme Court, which later reprimanded her. The Supreme Court also removed her from another murder case she was overseeing because one of the Cruz prosecutors she hugged was handling it.

Scherer, a former Broward prosecutor, told the students that while she might do some things differently, overall she thinks she did a good job overseeing the Cruz trial and does not regret the hugs.

“Not one person on that commission has ever tried a case like this,” Scherer said. Some of the commission’s judges and attorneys haven’t done trial work, she added, “much less a case where you have 17 families who have spent a big part of a 4 1/2 years with you.”

“I regret that it (the hugging) was found to be inappropriate,” Scherer said.

She announced her resignation from the bench shortly before the commission’s findings but said that had nothing to do with her decision. She said Thursday that she told her senior judge in 2018 that she would see the Cruz case through its conclusion but then likely leave to seek other opportunities and a higher salary.

Scherer now is a partner in the civil law firm that her father founded and has a legal affairs podcast that debuts Sunday. She is also in negotiations to host a “Judge Judy”-type television show.

Scherer said that on the morning after the shooting, she had a premonition she would be assigned the case by the court’s computer system. Later that day, she got it.

It was her first death penalty case, and some critics said she didn’t have enough experience to handle one of that complexity. On Thursday she said no other judge handling criminal cases in Broward County at that time had overseen a death penalty trial either. She had been a judge for almost six years when she was assigned the case.

She said that while it was hard to remain stoic, particularly when victims’ family members gave statements, she knew she had to.

“The men judges don’t cry. This female judge was not going to cry,” she said.

Scherer said she believes Cruz is a “sociopath” and feels no remorse for the killings or the pain he caused to the families and the Parkland community.

“Not one single bit,” she said.

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This story has been updated to correct that Scherer did not mention an incident involving a defense attorney.