SOUTHLAND : Last Alternate Joins McMartin Jury
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The McMartin Pre-School molestation trial moved perilously closer to a mistrial today as the judge replaced a juror suffering from a life-threatening ailment with the only remaining alternate juror.
“We are a heartbeat away from a mistrial,” Superior Court Judge William Pounders, who is presiding over the 29-month trial, the longest and costliest criminal trial in U.S. history, said just before he formally replaced the ailing juror.
If yet another juror needs to be replaced for whatever reason, fewer than 12 jurors would remain to hear the conclusion of the trial. Pounders would then in all likelihood declare a mistrial, something he has predicted that he will eventually have to do.
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