FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Prosecutors and defense lawyers in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas mass shooting trial will be allowed to refer to potential jurors by name, a Broward County judge ruled Friday.
The decision rejects a defense request asking for the potential jurors deciding the fate of confessed Marjory Stoneman Douglas High school shooter Nickolas Cruz to be referred to by number and not by name. The request would have protected the jurors from having their names disclosed to the public and, by extension, the news media.
“What (the) defendant requests is not permitted,” Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer wrote in her decision. “Exemptions to the specific laws on public records cannot be created from thin air.”
The defense motion would have barred court personnel and the media from disclosing the names of jurors, which are a public record under the law. During trials, the court bars media from taking pictures and videos showing jurors’ faces, and jurors are strictly prohibited from talking to the media or anyone else about their cases.
But their names have always been a public record, and media members are legally permitted to interview jurors after trials are concluded. In practice, such interviews are infrequent but not unusual.
In her ruling, Scherer left the door open for the defense to present a stronger argument to keep juror names from being publicly disclosed.
Scherer has not always seen eye to eye with the media during the case. In the summer of 2018, a few months after Cruz murdered 17 and wounded 17 more in the Parkland high school, Scherer blasted the South Florida Sun Sentinel for disclosing education records that were inadequately redacted by the Broward school district.
At the time, Scherer toyed with the idea of telling media outlets what they could and could not publish in the future. She later backed down from the threat, which was criticized by media law experts as an example of “prior restraint,” which is prohibited. Scherer cited the same principle in rejecting the defense’s anonymous jury request.
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