Mills v. State

Roger Mills was convicted of malice murder and aggravated assault after a shooting death outside a house party in Douglas County. During deliberations, the jury sent notes saying one juror did not believe the state's evidence and would only change her mind if she saw a clear video of both defendants firing guns. The trial judge questioned the jury briefly, identified the juror, and removed her, saying she was not following instructions and was unable to perform her duty. An alternate juror replaced her, and the jury then convicted Mills on all counts. On appeal, Mills argued the judge removed the juror without good cause or sufficient inquiry. The Supreme Court of Georgia agreed, finding that the juror had simply reached a different conclusion from her fellow jurors based on the evidence, not that she was incapacitated or refusing to deliberate. Because that was legally improper and harmful, the court reversed Mills's convictions, though it also found the evidence at trial would have supported a guilty verdict, meaning the state can retry him.

A trial court abuses its discretion when it removes a juror during deliberations based only on that juror's disagreement with the rest of the jury, without a factual showing that the juror is incapacitated, refusing to deliberate, or otherwise legally unfit to serve.

The ruling reinforces that Georgia trial judges cannot remove a lone holdout juror just for disagreeing with the majority, protecting jurors' independence during deliberations. It also means Mills's convictions are undone and the state must decide whether to retry the case from scratch.

Judgment reversed

1. Georgia law (O.C.G.A. § 15-12-172) lets a trial court replace a juror with an alternate only for reasons like illness, incapacity, or other good or legal cause, and courts must have a sound basis before removing a juror once deliberations have begun.
2. The jury's notes showed the holdout juror, Juror 23, simply did not believe the state's witnesses or evidence and found no proof the defendants were in the house, which is an ordinary exercise of a juror's role in weighing credibility, not evidence of incapacity.
3. Nothing in the notes showed Juror 23 had refused to participate in deliberations; she had simply reached a different conclusion than the other jurors, which past Georgia cases treat as an insufficient reason to remove a juror.
4. Juror 23's statement that only a clear video of the shooting would change her mind reflected her conclusion that the state had not met its burden of proof, consistent with following the court's own instructions, not a demand that the state meet some invented legal standard.
5. Because the trial court's brief questioning of the jury did not establish any sound, factual basis for removing Juror 23, the removal was an abuse of discretion, and because that error was harmful, Mills's convictions had to be reversed.

• murder conviction
• holdout juror
• jury deliberations
• juror removal
• Douglas County