Definition
The withdrawal of a juror is a procedural device by which a trial is effectively terminated — without a verdict and without an acquittal or conviction — through the formal removal of one juror from the panel, thereby preventing the remaining jurors from returning a valid verdict. Because a valid verdict requires the full jury, the removal of a single juror collapses the proceeding. The withdrawal does not resolve the case on its merits; the parties are restored to their original positions, and the matter may generally be retried.
The device originated in English practice and was historically used by courts to avoid the technical bar of a full acquittal or dismissal while still bringing an unworkable trial to a close. It served as a controlled escape valve when the court determined that proceeding would produce injustice — whether due to juror misconduct, surprise evidence, procedural irregularity, illness, or the failure of material evidence to materialize — but where an outright acquittal was neither warranted nor intended.
In modern American practice, the withdrawal of a juror has been largely superseded by the concept of the mistrial, which accomplishes the same result through direct judicial declaration. The two terms are functionally equivalent in most contexts today, though the historical mechanics differed.
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Common Confusion
WITHDRAWAL OF A JUROR vs. MISTRIAL: These terms describe substantially the same outcome through different procedural forms. A mistrial is a direct judicial declaration that the trial cannot continue and produces no valid verdict. The withdrawal of a juror was the older common-law mechanism for reaching the same result indirectly — by removing one juror so that no verdict was legally possible. Modern courts and codes use "mistrial" almost exclusively. Researchers encountering "withdrawal of a juror" in older reports should understand it as the functional ancestor of the mistrial, not a separate doctrine with distinct substantive consequences.
WITHDRAWAL OF A JUROR vs. DISCHARGE OF THE JURY: Discharge of the jury is the broader act of releasing the entire panel, either after a verdict or when the court determines the trial must end. Withdrawal of a juror is a specific mechanism that triggers that end by targeting one member of the panel. The distinction matters in older sources, where the two terms sometimes appear together and describe sequential steps in the same event.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in pre-twentieth-century American and English case law will encounter "withdrawal of a juror" frequently in contexts where a modern researcher would expect the word "mistrial." The doctrinal vocabulary shifted over the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and indexes and digests from that period will not cross-reference the two terms reliably. A search for mistrial doctrine in early materials that does not also search for withdrawal of a juror will return incomplete results.
The double jeopardy dimension is the most significant research trap. The question of whether a defendant could be retried after a juror was withdrawn — and under what circumstances the withdrawal was deemed to have been made with "manifest necessity" or with the defendant's consent — generated substantial litigation. Courts did not apply a uniform standard. Some treated withdrawal over a defendant's objection as equivalent to an acquittal and barred retrial; others held that the court's equitable discretion to withdraw a juror did not implicate jeopardy at all. This doctrinal instability means that cases from the same era may reach opposite conclusions on retrial, and the reasoning often depends on which theory of the withdrawal the court adopted.
Researchers should also note that the term appears differently in English and American sources. English practice was more formalized and more explicitly tied to the fiction of the juror's removal as the triggering mechanism. American courts were more willing to treat the substance of the ruling — termination of the trial — as controlling, and moved earlier toward "mistrial" as the operative term. Rapalje & Lawrence reflect this transitional moment, defining the term with reference to English practice while noting its American application.
In civil cases, the withdrawal of a juror was sometimes used as a device to enable settlement or to permit a nonsuit, with both parties consenting to the withdrawal as a means of ending the proceeding on agreed terms. Researchers working on civil procedure history should be alert to this use, which differs functionally from the contested criminal law context.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence define the withdrawal of a juror as the act of withdrawing one juror from a panel so that a verdict cannot be given, used when the court is satisfied that the interests of justice require that the trial be terminated short of verdict. Their treatment emphasizes the judicial discretion involved and the consequence that the parties are restored to their original positions for future proceedings.
The entry reflects the state of the doctrine in the early 1880s, when the terminology was still in active use in both English and American courts. Rapalje & Lawrence correctly identify the core mechanics but do not fully address the double jeopardy implications that had already become contested in American courts by that period. Researchers relying solely on this source for the retrial question will need to supplement with case law. The definition is sound as far as it goes but is procedural rather than doctrinal in its orientation.
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Jurisdictional Note
The withdrawal of a juror as a formal term of art appears primarily in English common law sources and in American cases from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Modern American jurisdictions codify the equivalent result under mistrial rules, and the specific phrase has largely disappeared from statutory and procedural codes. English practice retained the terminology longer; researchers working in English sources from the early twentieth century may still encounter it in active use.
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