Federal Trial Court Not Required To Replace Ill Juror.
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After a 12-member jury in a criminal trial had deliberated for more than a day and had received answers to five substantive questions, one jurors was excused for illness. Later the same day, the jury returned a guilty verdict. The defendant argued that under Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, rule 23(b)(3), the court abused its discretion by proceeding with 11 jurors rather than seating an alternate. The Ninth Circuit affirmed defendant’s conviction, stating: “If the court had seated an alternate, it would have had to direct the jury to begin deliberations anew [], adding at least a day to the proceedings and imposing on the jurors the difficult task of discarding any conclusions they had already reached.” (United States v. Brown (Ninth Cir.; May 1, 2015) 784 F.3d 1301.)
