Complaining juror ends up sitting anyway
By John Joyce
Published in News on September 4, 2014 1:46 PM
Juror No. 7 in the Stephon Jennings and Javonta Ellis murder trial was excused by Judge John E. Nobles Wednesday because of his "excessive complaining."
He will not be going far.
The judge instructed the juror to remain in the courtroom for the duration of the trial and to have no further contact with the remaining jurors.
The move came just after the second of two alternate jurors was selected and the jury was sent out of the room so that the lawyers could offer motions for the judge to hear outside of the jury's presence.
At the conclusion of the motions proceeding, Nobles called for the jury to come back in and be officially impaneled.
There was a problem, however. One of the jurors had been complaining about missing work.
Nobles called the lone juror to the jury box and asked what the fuss was about.
The man said he had recently moved and only works part time. The move had cleared out his bank account and therefore his missing work to serve as a juror might leave him in a financial hardship -- one he absolutely could not afford.
Nobles was not moved.
The judge instructed Juror No. 7 to take a seat in the audience and had the bailiff replace him with the first alternate juror.
This left only one alternate juror and 12 regular jurors.
The dismissed juror will be forced to stay for the remainder of the trial and miss work anyway, but will not participate in the trial.
It is unclear yet whether the man will still be paid the juror's wage.
Jurors who are impaneled and actually serve are paid $12 the first day, $20 for the second through fifth day and $40 a day from the sixth day on.
Public record laws prohibit the dismissed juror from being identified publicly if he is still being paid the juror's wage.
A second juror was dismissed just after the first witness testified in the case Tuesday.
Juror No. 9 said that he does not hear well and did not realize, when asked as a potential juror if he knew anyone connected with the case, that his nephew's name had been called.
As it turns out, the juror in fact has known the first witness, Travis James, all his life.
And, the third witness likely to be called, whose name cannot be released until such time that he is called to testify, is the juror's nephew.
The remaining alternate juror was moved into Juror No. 9's slot. Juror No. 9 was dismissed.
That means there are no more alternate jurors in the case.