As closing arguments loom, former Broward Sheriff’s Deputy Scot Peterson will not be taking the stand to defend his decision to take cover while a gunman wreaked havoc on the third floor of the freshman building at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School over five years ago.
Peterson is facing multiple counts of felony child neglect, culpable negligence and perjury for failing to do anything to prevent the mass shooting once he arrived outside the building where it was taking place. Six of the felonies carry a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, though it is unlikely someone without a prior criminal record would be sentenced so harshly.
Another lasting risk to Peterson would be the loss of his pension after 32 years in law enforcement. Peterson has moved away from South Florida since he resigned under pressure a short time after the Valentine’s Day 2018 shooting.
From the outset of the case, Peterson’s critics have portrayed it as an issue of holding him accountable for his failure to protect students in his care, while the defense has said he’s being used as a scapegoat for a system that failed gunman Nikolas Cruz long before he arrived on campus with his AR-15 style rifle and killed 17 people, injuring 17 others.
The last witness called by defense lawyer Mark Eiglarsh was Broward Sheriff’s Deputy Arthur Perry, a school resource officer from nearby Park Trail Elementary School, one of the deputies who responded to the shooting scene. Perry told the jury on Friday that he heard gunshots but did not race into the 1200 building to stop the mass shooting.
“I had no idea where the shots were from,” he said. “They definitely sounded like they were outside.”
A key argument from the defense is that Peterson, taking cover at the 700 building (just south of the 1200 building), did not know and could not know the source of the gunfire because the surrounding buildings produced an echo that left more than one witness questioning the source of the gunfire.
Perry and another deputy spent more than 35 minutes positioned at a parking lot just northwest of the 1200 building. From his vantage point, he could see the body of football coach Aaron Feis at the west entrance, and the bullet holes in the windows from the shots Cruz fired on the third-floor teacher’s lounge.
From that information, Perry said he concluded someone was shooting at the 1200 building, not from it.
Broward Circuit Judge Martin Fein turned down a defense request to find Peterson not guilty without letting the case go to the jury.
One of Peterson’s pre-trial arguments concentrated on a legal technicality that Fein said should be decided by the jury.
Peterson was charged with neglect as a “caregiver,” which until this case has never been applied to a law enforcement officer. Eiglarsh argued that cops are excluded from the legal definition of “caregiver,” while prosecutor Steven Klinger said he fit the legal definition of someone who is “responsible for a child’s welfare.”
Eiglarsh has only hinted at the technical argument throughout the trial, but Perry’s testimony touched on the subject directly.
When prosecutor Chris Killoran asked him Friday about his duty to protect the students at his school, calling them “your kids,” Perry was quick to correct him. “They’re not my kids,” he said. “They are students on campus.”
Perry also pushed back when Killoran described the students as “students at your school.”
“It is not my school,” Perry said. “It is the school I’m assigned to.”
