Who Is Elizabeth A. Scherer, Judge in the Parkland Trial?

Before being appointed to the Nikolas Cruz case following the Parkland tragedy, Judge Elizabeth A. Scherer was barely known outside of the Circuit Court in Broward County, Fla. Her cases had received little attention.

However, Judge Scherer’s first death penalty case has already proven complex; she will administer Mr. Cruz’s sentence when the jury recommends death or life in prison.

The nearly three-month jury selection process was characterized by uncertainty and disputes, including heavily scrutinized choices by Judge Scherer.

At one point, defense counsel attempted to withdraw — and then urged the court to do so, which she refused — after she insisted on the process continuing even when a member of the defence team was off sick with Covid-19.

Both the prosecution and the defense contended the judge made a fundamental mistake in April when she dismissed a group of possible jurors without interrogating them individually. Enough egregious errors might result in a death conviction being reversed on appeal, necessitating retrial years from now.

Republican Gov. Rick Scott appointed Judge Scherer, 46, to the bench in 2012. She had previously worked as a prosecutor for more than a decade, reporting to Michael J. Satz, the former state attorney who is now handling Mr. Cruz’s prosecution. She has since been elected again to the role.

Her father, William R. Scherer, co-founded the legal firm Conrad & Scherer and represented George W. Bush during the presidential election recount in 2000.

Mr. Scherer also served on the circuit judicial nominating panel until his daughter decided to run for office. Judge Scherer attended Florida State University and the University of Miami Law School.

She married a police detective after her first marriage ended in divorce, which became a problem in 2016 when she refused to recuse herself from a case being investigated by his department. She was removed by an appeals court, and she no longer handles cases or warrants for the Hollywood Police Department.
Public defenders requested Judge Scherer’s ouster early in the Parkland case after she wrote prosecutors a memo about the defenders’ attempts to visit Mr. Cruz in jail. Another court had deemed the document private.

Judge Scherer has also ruled in favor of the prosecution on other critical issues, such as allowing a possible jury walk-through of the school building where the shooting occurred and restricting how much public defenders can tell jurors about government agencies’ failings in dealing with Mr. Cruz.

In 2018, Judge Scherer made news when she chastised reporters from The South Florida Sun Sentinel for revealing information regarding Mr. Cruz’s treatment background. The information was found in public records that had been inappropriately redacted by Broward County Public Schools.

Though she finally refrained from doing so, Judge Scherer threatened to impose a prior restraint ban on future journalistic reports, which is against the law.