According to my mum: “if you even miss a single day they throw the entire jury out and have to restart the whole court case again so that the new jurors can hear all the evidence”. I feel that would make longer cases exponentially impractical.
I can’t find anything about this on the internet, other than for someone asking this question in America.
Interesting. I sounds like they might start with more than 10 jurors then, just in case.
Do they let a juror back in if they’re off sick for a day? I wonder what the threshold is?
Standard number in criminal trials is 12, and the judge can choose to have up to an additional 3 as spares if they think it’s necessary. See here: http://www.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/ja197791/s19.html
I believe they’d just postpone precedings until the juror is well (as maniacalmanicmania said was their experience). I’m pretty confident all jurors would have to hear all evidence.