Judge dismisses teacher from jury after trial begins

A judge dismissed a juror who was a teacher after a trial had started. After the verdict was entered, the defendants appealed to the court of appeals, arguing in part that the conviction should be overturned because the juror had been improperly dismissed.

A teacher was selected to sit on a jury at the trial of two brothers who were accused of health care fraud. During the jury selection process, the teacher said very little and never stated that she would be unable to serve as a juror. 

However, on the first day of the trial, the judge received an email from the teacher's principal, saying that the juror was the only seventh grade math teacher, that students were scheduled to take the STAAR test in four weeks, and that having the teacher out for two weeks to serve on the jury would "put them in a bind." 

Upon receiving that email, the judge excused the juror at the end of the day. In doing so, he stated that had he received the email during jury selection, he would have excused her and since they were very early on in the trial, he was willing to dismiss her at that time.

In reviewing the trial court's decision to dismiss the teacher juror, the court of appeals noted that the standard for dismissing a juror is different during jury selection as opposed to after the trial is underway. Before selection, a potential juror may be dismissed based on "undue hardship or extreme inconvenience," and district courts have broad discretion to make that decision. But after selection, jurors may be excused only if "unable to perform or . . . disqualified from performing their duties."

In this case, the court of appeals determined that the juror was not "unable to perform." 

When the district court judge first raised the principal's email with the parties, he noted that one option was to "tell the principal, so sorry, but we decided not to" excuse the juror. When the court later decided to dismiss her, it kept her on the jury until the end of the day, holding her in reserve in case another juror had to be excused because of "some sort of medical emergency" — indicating that the court would not have excused her had another juror actually become unable to serve or disqualified from serving. And when the court finally excused the juror, it suggested that she had in fact been performing her duties because the judge thanked her "for paying attention" and "for not begging and pleading" to be excused during jury selection.

Because the juror had been improperly dismissed, the court of appeals overturned the conviction and ordered the trial court to give the defendants a new trial.