I was asked recently whether a juror can be removed for refusing to deliberate. The case in which the issue arose has concluded, a federal circuit court just weighed in on the issue, and I thought that others might be interested in the law in this area, hence this post. There’s no North Carolina case directly on point. The closest precedent that we have is State v. Sanders, 347 N.C. 587 (1998), a case that arose from a capital resentencing. The jury in that case went off the rails in a number of ways, some of which aren’t relevant here. The aspect of the case that is pertinent concerns the jury’s conduct after it divided 11-1, with the majority favoring the death penalty. The holdout juror “indicated that several jurors expressed their belief that she was not capable of continuing deliberations and . . . stated that they hoped she or [a family member would] be [defendant's] next victim” if a life sentence were imposed and the defendant were paroled. In response, the holdout juror apparently stated that she could not impose the death penalty because she had not heard all the evidence at the defendant’s original trial. The trial judge declared a mistrial based on juror misconduct, and the state supreme court found that it was supported by manifest necessity. The jury was “not deliberating as [the trial judge] had instructed,” including by considering irrelevant matter such as parole eligibility and what evidence might have been introduced at the previous [...]
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