From the moment Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer was randomly assigned Broward County’s trial of the century — the case of school shooter Nikolas Cruz — buzz began about whether she was up to the task.

Though 42 and a former assistant prosecutor, Scherer is a relatively young and inexperienced judge. She was appointed to the bench six years ago by Gov. Rick Scott. It’s believed she got the appointment because her father, attorney Bill Scherer, is a big-time Republican fundraiser who was one of Scott’s early Broward supporters eight years ago.

With the Cruz case, Judge Scherer faces a trial of monumental scale, given its 34 victims and more than 950 witnesses. And in what will be the defining case of her career, the national spotlight will forgive few missteps.

There’s really no question but that Cruz committed the Valentine’s Day massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland. What’s playing out in Scherer’s courtroom these days is the pre-trial chess match that will likely determine if, or when, he is ever put to death, as prosecutors want.

Six months in, the jury remains out on whether Scherer has the wisdom, gravitas and emotional restraint to shepherd this case to a just end.

But some early steps don’t look good.

A week after the shooting, Cruz’s public defenders asked her to step aside for having sent prosecutors a memo — deemed confidential by another judge — about their efforts to visit Cruz in jail. In her very first ruling, it appears Scherer overstepped the legal lines and showed favoritism to the prosecution. These are the kind of decisions likely to be appealed post-trial that will make this case drag on for years.

More cause for concern arose last week when Judge Scherer made intemperate remarks during a hearing live-streamed via the courtroom’s camera. Simply put, the reviews weren’t good.

At issue: a consultant’s report

It happened after the South Florida Sun Sentinel published the report of a school board consultant hired to examine the events that led up to Feb. 14. That’s the day when Cruz, armed to the teeth, marched into the freshman building at his former high school and began destroying lives.

Superintendent Robert Runcie had promised to release the report once it was completed. But when the time came, the district’s attorneys stood in his way, saying its release would violate federal privacy laws that govern medical and student records. Joining their objections were Cruz’s public defenders, who said the report’s release would cripple his shot at a fair trial.

Anticipating our challenge that the report is a public record — not part of the state attorney’s criminal investigation, but something commissioned after the fact by the school board — the district’s attorneys beat us to the courthouse door, a move that would forgo their having to pay our attorney fees.

Judge Patti Englander Henning considered the matter in civil (not criminal) court, where disputes about access to public meetings and records routinely are heard. She agreed the report is a public record. And though the Sunshine Law now has a thousand-plus exemptions, the possibility that a public record might affect someone’s criminal case is not among them.

That said, Henning ordered the district to redact information about Cruz’s medical and student records. Our attorney, Dana McElroy, agreed that privacy laws prevent government from releasing some of this information. But she urged the judge to narrowly define what must be blacked out.

Henning also stayed her order for five days, giving Cruz’s attorneys time to appeal to Judge Scherer for a different outcome, which they did for far different reasons.

Defense calls report “whitewash”

Defense attorney David Frankel called the report a “whitewash,” commissioned to absolve the district of responsibility for how it had handled Cruz’s complex psychological problems. Our attorney, meanwhile, argued that the criminal court shouldn’t be deciding whether to release the report. And she reiterated her plea that the district not black out more details than required by law.

What happened next put the case back on the national stage and Judge Scherer in an unflattering spotlight.

When the district released the report Aug. 3 via a link on its website, our reporters, Paula McMahon and Brittany Wallman, found 1,078 of its 1,707 lines — or about 64 percent— blacked out. From what little they saw, it appeared the district had largely handled Cruz’s case appropriately. A press release said the report found the school district had provided “significant and appropriate services to Nikolas Cruz in compliance with federal laws.”

And now, the rest of the story.

As perhaps you’ve heard, a reader alerted Wallman via Facebook that the redacted report, released in PDF format, could be read in its entirety if copy-and-pasted into a Word or Google document, or even an email. And so it was.

School district flubs report’s release

The Sun Sentinel broke no laws in obtaining the full report. “Anybody could get to it,” editor-in-chief Julie Anderson rightly said. After much discussion, including consultation with our attorneys, we published a second story that included what the report identified as two significant mistakes in how district officials handled Cruz.

First, they misstated his options when he was about to be removed from Stoneman Douglas his junior year, leading him to refuse special education services. Second, they “did not follow through” when he asked to return to the therapeutic environment of Cross Creek School, the report said.

We have to ask: Why were the school district’s key failures blacked out?

“In part because of the errors, Cruz had no school counseling or other special education services in the 14 months leading up to the shooting on Feb. 14,” the report says.

The school district’s lawyers went ballistic when they saw our story. Apparently without consulting the school board, they filed a sworn petition saying the school board wanted the Sun Sentinel, McMahon and Wallman held in contempt of court.

Which brings us back to Judge Scherer.

A voice filled with contempt

At the Aug. 15 status-conference hearing, the judge heard the district’s petition and asked if our reporters were present. They weren’t. The answer didn’t sit well with Scherer. She sounded ready to speak to McMahon and Wallman with contempt, if not hold them in contempt.