Parkland School Shooter’s Jury Selection Begins

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter Nikolas Cruz enters the courtroom before jury pre-selection in the penalty phase of his trial at the Broward County Courthouse in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on April 4, 2022. Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun Sentinel via AP, Pool

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.—The first day of jury selection in the Parkland mass shooting trial was slow, methodical, and painstaking—a process that is expected to drag on for two months.

More than 120 of the first 160 prospective jurors who filed through Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer’s courtroom on Monday were dismissed. Most said it would be impossible for them to serve from June through September. That’s the amount of time it is expected to take for lawyers to present their cases in a trial that will end with a jury deciding whether Nikolas Cruz gets life in prison or a sentence of death for murdering 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.