Can a juror simply be replaced by an alternate?published at 00:07 BST 4 September<\/p>\n
00:07 BST 4 September<\/p>\n
Linsday Clancy’s attorney Kevin Reddington today called for the removal of a juror after a note from other jurors claimed the person was not following instructions.<\/p>\n
The judge denied that request, but Reddington says an “inquiry” into the juror is set for tomorrow morning. <\/p>\n
So can a juror simply be replaced by an alternate?<\/p>\n
No, says Massachusetts criminal defence attorney Joe Serpa.<\/p>\n
“An inability to agree with the other jurors is not the same thing as an inability to serve,” Serpa told the BBC.<\/p>\n
Massachusetts law does not permit the court to remove a dissenting juror simply to break an impasse, he explained.<\/p>\n
“The judge must first conduct a hearing and find a genuine, legally sufficient reason for discharge\u2014such as illness, incapacity, an external conflict, or other demonstrated misconduct or inability to perform the juror\u2019s duties,” Serpa said.<\/p>\n
If the judge does make the required finding to remove the juror, Massachusetts procedure allows another person to be selected randomly from the remaining six alternates. But the new group of 12 jurors then becomes a newly constituted jury and must disregard all previous deliberations and start from scratch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Can a juror simply be replaced by an alternate?published at 00:07 BST 4 September 00:07 BST 4 September…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1184674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[748,393,4884,12,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":["post-1185122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-news","tag-northern-ireland","tag-scotland","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-wales"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/117210108834237024","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1185122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1184674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1185122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1185122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1185122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}