NC Supreme Court splits in upholding juror substitution law

The North Carolina Supreme Court split 5-2 Friday in upholding a state law that permits the substitution of a juror after deliberations in a case have started. The decision reversed a unanimous decision from the state Appeals Court.

The decision restores a life sentence without parole for Eric Ramond Chambers, who was convicted of first-degree murder in 2022 after a fatal shooting at a Raleigh motel. Chambers also was sentenced to an additional 110-144 months in prison for an assault charge related to the same incident.

Chambers’ lawyers appealed the decision because one juror had been excused from the case after participating in less than a half hour of deliberations. With a substitute juror in place the following morning, a 12-member jury spent roughly three hours in new deliberations before finding Chambers guilty.

“In this case we resolve whether a statute that allows a juror to be excused and substituted by an alternate after the jury in a criminal trial has begun to deliberate violates our state constitution,” Chief Justice Paul Newby wrote for the court’s majority. “Article I, Section 24 requires a conviction to be by a unanimous jury in open court. This Court has consistently held that a constitutionally prescribed jury in a criminal case must be composed of twelve people.”

“The statute in question requires a jury to begin its deliberations anew following the substitution of  an alternate juror,” Newby added. “We therefore conclude that the statute does not violate defendant’s state constitutional right to a jury of twelve, and we reverse the decision of the Court of Appeals.”

Originally enacted in 1977, the state law on juror substitution initially allowed for a juror to be replaced only before the case reached the jury for deliberations. A 2021 amendment permitted juror substitution “at any time before the verdict is rendered,” Newby explained.

Chambers represented himself during the trial, “and he chose to be absent from the courtroom after the trial court cut off his closing argument for failure to follow the trial court’s instructions,” Newby wrote. That meant that Chambers raised no objections to the juror substitution during his trial.

Trial Judge Rebecca Holt followed the law’s guidance on calling for the jury to begin deliberations again after the juror substitution. She instructed jurors to  “’restart … deliberations from the beginning,’” Newby quoted from the court transcript. “’This means that you should disregard entirely any deliberations taken place before the alternate juror was substituted and should consider freshly the evidence as if the previous deliberations had never occurred.’”

Newby noted the longstanding rule that a jury must have 12 members to render a verdict. “This Court has repeatedly held that no variation in the number of jurors participating in a verdict is permissible,” he wrote.

“Looking to subsection 15A-1215(a), we conclude that its unconstitutionality has not been shown beyond a reasonable doubt,” the chief justice added. “Indeed, although it contemplates the substitution of alternative jurors, it provides two critical safeguards that ensure that the twelve-juror threshold remains sacrosanct.”

“Not only does subsection 15A-1215(a) provide that ‘[i]n no event shall more than [twelve] jurors participate in the jury’s deliberations’; it also requires trial courts to instruct juries to ‘begin … deliberations anew’ if an alternative juror is substituted after jury deliberations have begun,” the majority opinion explained.

“This requirement preserves the statute’s constitutionality,” Newby wrote. “When a jury follows the trial court’s instruction and restarts deliberations, as it is presumed to do, there is no longer a risk that the verdict will be rendered by thirteen people. This is because any discussion in which the excused juror participated is disregarded and entirely new deliberations are commenced by the newly-constituted twelve: the original eleven jurors and the substituted alternate. Therefore, the ultimate verdict is rendered by the constitutionally requisite jury of twelve.”

The court’s Republican justices supported Newby’s decision. The two Democratic justices dissented.

“[T]he North Carolina Constitution requires a unanimous verdict of twelve people — a verdict reached with the consent of all jurors,” Justice Allison Riggs wrote. “Long-standing precedent from this Court holds that deliberations involving more than twelve people violate the constitutional right to a unanimous verdict.”

“The statute at issue here, N.C.G.S. § 15A-1215(a), which allows for the replacement of a juror during deliberations, does not safeguard the requirement for a unanimous verdict from a jury of twelve enshrined in our constitution,” Riggs added.

“Instructions that mandate that jurors ‘begin … deliberations anew’ cannot remedy the structural error resulting from more than twelve participants in the jury verdict,” Riggs added. “Thus, I would conclude that allowing for the substitution of an alternate juror during deliberations violates Article I, Section 24 of the North Carolina Constitution and is unconstitutional beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Riggs dismissed the fact that the excused juror took part in a limited amount of deliberations.

“A curative instruction cannot erase the thirty minutes of deliberation that occurred with the first jury of twelve,” she wrote. “It is entirely possible that deliberation by the second jury of twelve was informed and influenced by the excused juror’s views and discussion during the first deliberation.”

“In accordance with the right enshrined in our 1776 State Constitution and centuries of case law from this Court, I would hold that allowing for the substitution of a juror after the start of deliberations under N.C.G.S. § 15A-1215(a) is unconstitutional,” Riggs concluded.

“NC Supreme Court splits in upholding juror substitution law” was originally published on www.carolinajournal.com.