Seven months after the gunman within the Parkland, Fla., college taking pictures was sentenced to life in jail for murdering 14 college students and three workers members, prosecutors on Wednesday started making an attempt to persuade a jury {that a} former sheriff’s deputy also needs to be held criminally answerable for not intervening to cease the bloodbath.
The deputy, Scot Peterson, served as the college useful resource officer at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas Excessive College on the time of the shootings in 2018. For not confronting the gunman, he’s going through 10 costs, together with seven counts of kid neglect — a uncommon prosecution of a regulation enforcement officer concerned within the response to a mass taking pictures.
In opening statements, the prosecution repeatedly famous that after arriving on the scene on the afternoon of Feb. 14, Mr. Peterson stayed in a stairway of an adjoining college constructing whereas the shootings befell in Constructing 1200.
“The defendant won’t ever go away that alcove whereas the shooter is in that constructing,” mentioned Steven Klinger, an assistant state legal professional in Broward County. “Actually, he doesn’t go away it for 30 or 40 minutes when all the things is completed.”
The protection supplied a blunt response.
“We’re right here as a result of my shopper was sacrificed,” mentioned Mark Eiglarsh, Mr. Peterson’s lawyer, arguing that Mr. Peterson was on trial solely as a result of extra highly effective regulation enforcement officers had sought to assuage the anger of grieving dad and mom by scapegoating him. “He was thrown beneath the bus. He isn’t a felony.”
The sound of gunfire was echoing off buildings on the 45-acre college campus because the shootings befell over roughly six minutes, Mr. Eiglarsh mentioned, and Mr. Peterson ”couldn’t discern exactly the place the pictures have been coming from.” The protection, he added, had 22 witnesses who have been equally confused that day.
“There was a pronounced echo and reverberation that the witnesses will discuss, that left them listening to the identical pictures and questioning ‘The place is that coming from?’” Mr. Eiglarsh mentioned.
Just one particular person was accountable, Mr. Eiglarsh mentioned, posting a photograph of the convicted shooter, Nicholas Cruz, for the jury to see and calling him a “sick, twisted monster.”
Mr. Peterson, wearing a blue swimsuit and crimson tie, listened carefully and took notes all through the opening statements. The courtroom was packed to capability with spectators, together with his spouse and daughter.
A conviction of a member of regulation enforcement for inaction throughout a mass taking pictures might have sweeping repercussions for policing in Florida and past, authorized specialists say. Mr. Peterson faces a decades-long jail sentence on the accusation that he failed in his position as a caregiver for the scholars.
Mr. Peterson was the primary officer on the scene, and by his personal account he didn’t rush into Constructing 1200 at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas Excessive College, the place the gunman killed 17 folks and wounded 17 others. He as an alternative took cowl within the stairway of the adjoining constructing, partly as a result of he mentioned he feared {that a} sniper was firing from outdoors.
Mr. Peterson additionally directed different officers away from the place the gunman was firing an AR-15-style weapon on the campus in Parkland, an prosperous group about 20 miles northwest of Fort Lauderdale.
The trial, which is predicted to final two months, is more likely to expose points that police departments throughout the USA have been grappling with for the reason that Columbine college taking pictures in 1999, mentioned Robert Jarvis, a regulation professor at Nova Southeastern College in South Florida.
Earlier than Columbine, officers have been advised to attend for SWAT groups to confront mass shooters, however “since then, we’ve been anticipating cops to run in,” Mr. Jarvis mentioned. “It’s a very attention-grabbing query as to what we anticipate cops to do.”
That expectation was underscored in Could 2022 when the police in Uvalde, Texas, waited greater than an hour earlier than coming into a classroom at Robb Elementary College, the place an 18-year-old man had fatally shot 19 college students and two academics. The gunman was in the end killed by members of a U.S. Border Patrol tactical group, and subsequent investigations faulted Texas police for failing to behave rapidly.
Within the Parkland case, the fees towards Mr. Peterson relate to the deaths and accidents on the third ground of the constructing, which prosecutors say he had an opportunity to cease. In response to an investigation by the Florida Division of Regulation Enforcement, the gunman was making his solution to the third ground 73 seconds after Mr. Peterson arrived in a golf cart at Constructing 1200. Mr. Peterson was armed with a service revolver and was not carrying physique armor.
Mr. Peterson is charged with seven felony counts of kid neglect within the deaths of 4 college students and the wounding of three others, aged 14 to 17. He additionally faces three misdemeanor counts of culpable negligence for the deaths of an 18-year-old pupil and a 35-year-old cross nation coach and the wounding of a instructor.
Within the lead-up to the trial, Mr. Eiglarsh, the protection lawyer, tried to influence Decide Martin Fein of Broward County Circuit Courtroom to dismiss the kid neglect costs, arguing that they weren’t justified beneath Florida regulation.
To be convicted of kid neglect, state regulation says, the particular person should be a caregiver to the kid. Mr. Eiglarsh argued that the regulation doesn’t embody the police within the definition of a caregiver.
Noting that the Florida Supreme Courtroom and different state appellate courts had discovered {that a} instructor, a babysitter and even a kidnapper have been caregivers beneath the regulation, Decide Fein rejected the protection request, saying, “This dedication can be made by the jury primarily based on the proof offered at trial.”
Mr. Jarvis, the regulation professor, mentioned discovering a faculty useful resource officer to be a caregiver to 1000’s of scholars “would impose legal responsibility when nobody thought it could apply.”
He added that prosecutors additionally face a frightening activity in making an attempt to persuade the six jurors and 4 alternates that Mr. Peterson is responsible of culpable negligence. To take action, they have to present Mr. Peterson knew or ought to have identified that his actions — or inaction — put college students and workers in peril.
Mr. Peterson can also be charged with a misdemeanor depend of perjury, with prosecutors accusing him of mendacity to investigators in telling them that he heard solely two or three pictures coming from the constructing and that he didn’t see any college students operating from it when he was within the stairwell together with his gun drawn.
Whereas different witnesses described the confusion that surrounded the taking pictures, many advised investigators that it sounded to them as if the gunfire was coming from Constructing 1200.
Mr. Peterson mentioned he was uncertain.
“I didn’t even suppose it was even contained in the constructing ’trigger it was so clear and loud,” he mentioned, based on a Florida Division of Regulation Enforcement report. “At that time I knew it was near this constructing, however I wasn’t even positive if it was within the constructing.”
Mr. Peterson, who would lose his $104,000 annual pension if convicted, retired after the taking pictures and was fired retroactively. He was launched on bond and moved to North Carolina.
He has expressed deep regret for the deaths.
“It’s haunting,” he advised The Washington Put up in June 2018. “I’ve minimize that day up a thousand methods with 1,000,000 completely different what-if eventualities, however the backside line is I used to be there to guard, and I misplaced 17.”
However Mr. Peterson additionally insisted that he adopted police procedures.
“I’ve my gun out and I’m scanning, and I’m trying. And that’s what we’re skilled to do,” he advised NBC. “Once you — once you get a place and canopy it, we’re skilled to scan and look.”
However state investigators mentioned Mr. Peterson, who was an lively shooter incident teacher for the college system, ignored essential elements of the coaching.
“If you’re on scene or within the space and listen to gunshots, it’s best to instantly entry what you could have and put together to reply,” investigators wrote, quoting from the lively shooter coaching course. “Bear in mind, each time you hear a gunshot in an lively shooter incident, it’s a must to consider that’s one other sufferer being killed.”
