Fifth Circuit Reverses Defendant’s Conviction Because Judge Improperly Dismissed Teacher-Juror Based on Principal Saying She Was The Only 7th Grade Math Teacher at The School

Pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 24(c)(1), seated jurors can only be dismissed if they are “unable to perform or who are disqualified from performing their duties.” So, what should the court do when the principal for a juror-teacher calls the court and says she’s the only seventh grade math teacher at the school? The answer is not to do what the court did in United States v. Carpenter, 2025 WL 1720670 (5th Cir. 2025).

In Carpenter, the facts were as stated above. Over defense counsel’s objection, the trial judge decided to (kind of) dismiss the juror, ruling as follows:

If I heard this [during voir dire], I would have excused her…. [G]iven that we’re early on in the trial—

….

But what I plan to do is not excuse her until the end of the day because if we have some sort medical emergency with another juror, like I would like to know as much as I can…. I will hold her back and excuse her on the record once we’re done at the end of the day.

In later reversing the defendant’s convictions, the Fifth Circuit ruled as follows:

In this case, the district court did not make any finding that the dismissed juror was “unable to perform” her duties under Rule 24(c). Nor did the court find that the juror’s “ability to perform” was “impaired” in any way….Instead, the court indicated that because it would have excused the juror for “undue hardship” had it received the school principal’s email during voir dire, it would dismiss her after the first day of trial on the same basis. This suggests that the district court looked not to whether the juror was “unable to perform” as Rule 24(c)  requires but rather to whether jury service would impose an “undue hardship or extreme inconvenience” under § 1866(c). To the extent the district court conflated the two standards, doing so was error.

What can be divined from the record indicates that the juror was not “unable to perform” at all. When the district court first raised the principal’s email with the parties, the court 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 nonetheless 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: The court thanked her “for paying attention” and “for not begging and pleading” to be excused during voir dire. This record undermines any implicit finding that the juror was unable to serve within the confines of Rule 24(c).

-CM