Criminal defendant gets new trial after juror thought he was following her during trial

I would guess that it's a nightmare for a judge to deal with a jury problem during trial. In this case, a juror told the judge a few days into the criminal trial that she thought the defendant had been trailing her in his car a few days earlier, and she had shared this concern with her fellow jurors. The court has to discharge an unqualified juror, but you know the court does not want to declare a mistrial either. What to do?

The case is People v. Fisher, issued by the New York Court of Appeals on April 23. The defendant was charged on a drug offense. On the first day of jury selection, one  juror thought the defendant was following her in his car, six to eight car lengths away from her. She did not promptly share this concern with the court but waited three days, telling other jurors in the meantime about this while they deliberated on the defendant's guilt. When the juror finally told the judge, he did not believe the defendant had been following her, and the jury proceeded to find the defendant guilty.

Defendant gets a new trial. The Court of Appeals finds the jury was "grossly unqualified" to sit on the case, as it finds the juror held a strong bias against the defendant such that he was denied an impartial jury. The key here is that her concern related to the defendant's character and her concern that he was trying to intimidate her, as she was almost certain he was in fact following her, though she admitted it was possible the defendant was going somewhere else and it may have been a coincidence that she saw him on the road that day.

Also concerning is that the juror did not share her concerns with the court right away, after she told the other jurors that she thought the defendant had been following her. That brings an irrelevant concern into the jury deliberations. Another problem is that when the court asked the juror if she could be fair and impartial, she replied, "I can be a fair and impartial juror, yes, I can say that, because the other juror members encouraged me, because their safety might be at risk." The Court of Appeals observes, "By reiterating her concern for safety even while assuring the court that she could be fair, Juror Six undercut the value of her assurance" that she could be fair and impartial.