A woman refused to be a jury in Nikolas Cruz trial because she must attend to her “sugar daddy”

Judge Elizabeth Scherer's face wore an expression of bewilderment when a woman identified as “Miss Bristol” said she was too busy tending to her “sugar daddy” and asked her to be excused as a jury member in the trial of the shooter, Nikolas Cruz, who is facing a possible death penalty for the murder of 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in February 2018.

On the first day of jury selection interviews, Ms. Bristol gave some reasons to Broward County Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer not to participate in the process, because her schedule would prevent her from focusing on the trial.

In an excerpt from the interview that was broadcast, the potential juror heard: “July 7 is my birthday, the 4th is my son's birthday and the 18th is my oldest son's birthday, so this is not going to work.”

Because these reasons did not convince Judge Scherer that the process could take about six months, the interviewee went further in her excuses and finally said that she needed to work something out with her “suggar daddy”. The judge was taken aback and said she did not understand what she meant by those words.

After hesitating a little, Miss Bristol finally clarified: “Well, I'm married, and I have my sugar daddy, and I see him every day.” After hearing this argument, the justice attorney decided to excuse her because of the relevance of the case.

In fact, the judge ruled out the 11 potential jurors in the first phase of the interviews because they will decide the fate of the shooter, who faces a possible death sentence or a life prison sentence without the possibility of parole.

The young Nikolas Cruz accepted before the judge to be responsible for the deaths of 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February 2018, and will face a trial in which the twelve-member jury will decide whether to receive the death penalty.

But for Cruz to be sentenced to capital punishment, the jury's decision must be unanimous, because even if there were eleven votes in favor of this punishment, a single vote against would suffice for the confessed murderer to serve a life sentence.

Juries in the trial of Nikolas Cruz for the massacre perpetrated at a high school in Parkland in 2018 will be able to access the messages and images that the defendant posted on his Instagram account before the shooting, as decided by the judge in the case, Elizabeth Scherer.

The defense attorneys for Cruz, who pleaded guilty in 2021 to the deaths of 14 students and three employees of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, claimed that making public the content of the defendant's Instagram account before the massacre was an attack on the right to privacy.

On the contrary, the Prosecutor's Office was of the opinion that in order to do its job it needed those messages to be public and to be part of the evidence of the trial, which has been postponed for various reasons, but especially because of the covid-19 pandemic.

In a photograph posted by Cruz on Instagram before February 14, 2018, on the day of the shooting, he is seen wielding a semi-automatic weapon and others show assault rifles and ammunition, according to the court documents in the case. On the same day of the massacre, Nikolas Cruz, who was then 19 years old and had been a student of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, was arrested and confessed to the police that he had been the perpetrator of the shooting.

The young man, who was expelled from that center for misconduct, has been detained since then and has had problems in prison, where he had a fight with a guard.

On October 20, he accepted before the judge his guilt in the massacre of 17 people in Parkland and regretted what he did. “I'm doing this for you and I don't care if you don't believe me, I love you and I know you don't believe me but I have to live with this every day and it brings me nightmares,” he said reading a statement.

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