FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Roses that had been dropped at honor love on that Valentine’s Day in 2018 lay withered, their dried and cracked petals scattered throughout classroom flooring nonetheless smeared with the blood of victims gunned down by a former scholar greater than 4 years earlier.
Bullet holes pocked partitions and shards of glass from home windows shattered by gunfire crunched eerily underfoot at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas Excessive Faculty, the place shooter Nikolas Cruz murdered 14 college students and three employees members. Nothing had been modified, aside from the elimination of the victims’ our bodies and a few private gadgets.
The 12 jurors and 10 alternates who will determine whether or not Cruz will get the dying penalty or life in jail made a uncommon go to to the bloodbath scene Thursday, tracing Cruz’s steps by means of the three-story freshman constructing, often called “Constructing 12.” After they left, a bunch of journalists was allowed in for a a lot faster first public view.
The sight was deeply unsettling: Massive swimming pools of dried blood nonetheless stained classroom flooring. A lock of darkish hair rested on the ground the place one of many victims’ our bodies as soon as lay. A single black rubber shoe was in a hallway. Browned rose petals had been strewn throughout a hallway the place six folks died.
In classroom after classroom, open notebooks displayed uncompleted lesson plans: A blood-coated e book known as “Inform Them We Keep in mind” sat atop a bullet-riddled desk within the classroom the place instructor Ivy Schamis taught college students concerning the Holocaust. Hooked up to a bulletin board within the room an indication learn: “We are going to always remember.”
Within the classroom of English instructor Dara Hass, the place probably the most college students had been gunned down, college students had written papers about Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager who was shot by the Taliban for going to highschool and has since been a world advocate for academic entry for ladies and women.
One of many college students wrote: “A bullet went straight to her head however not her mind.” One other learn: “We go to highschool each day of the week and we take all of it with no consideration. We cry and complain with out figuring out how fortunate we're to have the ability to be taught.”
The door of Room 1255, instructor Stacey Lippel’s classroom, was pushed open — like others to indicate that Cruz shot into it. Hanging on a wall inside was an indication studying, “No Bully Zone.” The artistic writing project for the day was written on the whiteboard: “How you can write the right love letter.”
And nonetheless hanging on the wall of a second-floor hallway was a quote from James Dean: “Dream as for those who’ll stay without end, stay as for those who’ll die as we speak.”
Inside slain instructor Scott Beigel’s geography classroom, his laptop computer was nonetheless open on his desk. Pupil assignments evaluating the tenets of Christianity and Islam remained there, some graded, some not. On his whiteboard, Beigel, the college’s cross-country coach, had been writing the gold, silver and bronze medalists in every occasion on the Winter Olympics, which had begun 5 days earlier.
Prosecutors, who rested their case following the jury’s tour, hope the go to will assist show that Cruz’s actions had been chilly, calculated, heinous and merciless; created an amazing threat of dying to many individuals and “interfered with a authorities perform” — all aggravating elements below Florida’s capital punishment regulation.
Beneath Florida court docket guidelines, neither the decide nor the attorneys had been allowed to talk to the jurors — and the jurors weren’t allowed to converse with one another — once they retraced the trail Cruz adopted on Feb. 14, 2018, as he methodically moved from flooring to flooring, firing down hallways and into school rooms as he went. Previous to the tour, the jurors had already seen surveillance video of the capturing and pictures of its aftermath.
The constructing has been sealed and is now surrounded by a 15-foot (4.6-meter) chain-link fence wrapped in a privateness mesh display fixed with zip ties. It looms ominously over the college and its academics, employees and three,300 college students, and might be seen simply by anybody close by. The Broward County college district plans to demolish it each time the prosecutors approve. For now, it's a court docket exhibit.
“When you find yourself driving previous, it’s there. When you will class, it’s there. It's only a colossal construction which you can’t miss,” stated Kai Koerber, who was a Stoneman Douglas junior on the time of the capturing. He's now on the College of California, Berkeley, and the developer of a psychological well being telephone app. “It's only a fixed reminder ... that's tremendously making an attempt and horrible.”
Cruz, 23, pleaded responsible in October to 17 counts of first-degree homicide; the trial is barely to find out if he's sentenced to dying or life with out parole.
Miami protection lawyer David S. Weinstein stated prosecutors hope the go to will probably be “the ultimate piece in erasing any doubt that any juror may need had that the dying penalty is the one advice that may be made.”
Such crime website visits are uncommon. Weinstein, a former prosecutor, stated in additional than 150 jury trials relationship again to the late Eighties, he has solely had one.
One purpose is that they're a logistical nightmare for the decide, who must get the jury to the placement and again to the courthouse with out incident, or threat a mistrial. And in a typical case, a go to wouldn’t even current truthful proof: After regulation enforcement leaves, the constructing or public area returns to its regular use. The scene will get cleaned up, objects get moved and repairs are made. It’s why judges order jurors in lots of trials to not go to the scene on their very own.
Craig Trocino, a College of Miami regulation professor who has represented defendants interesting their dying sentences, stated the go to — mixed with the myriad graphic movies and images jurors have already seen — might open an avenue for Cruz’s attorneys in the event that they discover themselves in the identical state of affairs.
“Sooner or later proof turns into inflammatory and prejudicial,” he stated. “The location go to could also be a cumulative capstone.”
Cruz’s attorneys have argued that prosecutors have used proof not simply to show their case, however to inflame the jurors’ passions.
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