Judge Elizabeth Scherer violated several rules of judicial conduct during the trial of Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz, the Judicial Qualifications Commission said.
for the 2018 murder of 14 students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School after the jury could not unanimously agree that he deserved a death sentence.The 15-member commission found that Scherer “unduly chastised” lead public defender Melisa McNeill and her team, wrongly accused one Cruz attorney of threatening her child, and improperly embraced members of the prosecution in the courtroom after the trial’s conclusion.
Scherer announced last month that she would be retiring from the bench on June 30. The commission said the resignation was not part of any deal struck with the judge. The commission report said that Scherer acknowledged during her testimony that her conduct during the trial “fell short” of what’s expected of judges and that “her treatment of members of the defense team was at times not patient, dignified or courteous.
Before the trial she criticized two reporters from the Sun Sentinel newspaper 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; legal experts say such a move would have been unconstitutional.when McNeill and her team suddenly rested their case after calling only a small fraction of their expected witnesses.
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