Yahoo Finance After 3 jurors test positive for COVID, judge calls mistrial in Mecklenburg court case
A weeklong Mecklenburg County court case ended in a mistrial Monday after three jurors tested positive for COVID-19.
Superior Court Judge Bob Ervin of Morganton stopped the civil trial mere hours after a new courthouse policy went back in place requiring all visitors to wear masks before entering, the latest effort by government and employers to slow the reignited virus.
By that time, the highly infectious delta variant of COVID-19 already had entered the jury box in Ervin’s courtroom.
One juror tested positive on Friday after complaining of coronavirus-like symptoms, Ervin told the Observer during a phone interview Tuesday. In response, the Mecklenburg County Health Department tested everyone in the judge’s courtroom on Friday afternoon, including Ervin.
After the trial resumed Monday morning, Ervin said he learned two other jurors had also contracted the virus. Both were in the courtroom Monday and Friday, potentially exposing other jurors and court personnel.
The trial started July 26. Ervin estimated that it would have finished as early as Wednesday.
Ervin said he had the option of halting the trial until the infected jurors completed 10-day quarantines. But he said the delay was impractical due to scheduling conflicts as well as the possibility that the virus could ultimately infect other jurors and other essential trial participants.
Cases of the delta variant have been surging in the Charlotte region, North Carolina and around the country.
Mecklenburg to require county employees to show proof of COVID vaccine or get tested
Mecklenburg County also just noted a tragic milestone Monday: At least 1,000 people have now died from the disease.
The virus has also re-entered the Mecklenburg County jail with a small number of inmates placed under isolation last week, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
While Gov. Roy Cooper has so far resisted a statewide mask mandate, Mecklenburg courthouse officials announced their own mandatory mask policy late last week. Ervin said he put his own mask mandate in place last Tuesday during the civil trial.
COVID in the courtrooms
For more than a year, the pandemic eviscerated normal trial schedules, leading to massive backlog in felony and misdemeanor cases in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, the state’s largest local court district.
In December, Mecklenburg’s first attempted jury trial after a nine-month hiatus ended in a mistrial when a juror tested positive after deliberations for a verdict had begun.
On Tuesday, Ervin stopped short of saying that the experiences in his courtroom over recent days may be the harbinger of a new era of no jury trials in Mecklenburg County.
“I don’t know that I’m qualified from a public health perspective ... on what people should do,” he said. “What is clear is that the rules are changing in terms of what guidance we’re getting. We’re learning more about the capacity and characteristics of the delta variant, and that certainly makes it more challenging.”
Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Bob Bell, part of a courthouse team that issued the mask order last week, said the interruption of the trial is sobering.
Asked if the mistrial would lead to another moratorium on jury trials in Mecklenburg, Bell said, “I don’t anticipate that at this point. But we’re monitoring the situation weekly.”
