Here's Why It Took Four Years For Nikolas Cruz's Sentencing Trial To Happen

Though Nikolas Cruz was arrested on the day of the shooting, and his initial arraignment began the following day, his trial immediately ran into numerous delays. The first major obstacle came in March 2018. During an arraignment in which Broward County Judge Elizabeth Scherer entered a “not guilty” plea for Cruz — who refused to speak and kept his eyes on the ground — it was debated whether Cruz had the funds available to hire a private attorney (via Local 10).

In these first arraignments, Cruz had been supplied a legal team by the Public Defender’s Office on the grounds that he had a low income. But it emerged that as well as Cruz holding around $12,000 in savings, he was also due to a windfall of $25,000 from his mother’s life insurance. In response, Judge Scherer ordered a 30-day reset, allowing Cruz’s defense team to update the documents outlining his financial assets. This month-long delay was only the first of many, with the COVID-19 pandemic playing the most major role in slowing down the legal process. As AP reported in 2021, 1000 days after Cruz committed his crimes, the pandemic meant that cases were halted as courtrooms were indefinitely closed. But the same source also notes that the prosecution’s determination for Cruz to receive the death penalty has made the trial much longer; Cruz’s defense team had previously attempted to offer a plea deal in exchange for a sentence of life in prison, but the prosecution rejected it.

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