An extra juror placed with the jury who can fill in if a seated juror cannot continue (e.g., child care issues, death in the family, car breaks down), so the trial does not have to restart.
“let's say you have an assault case, that's gonna go on a couple of days, a lot of the times the judges will allow an alternate juror to be placed with the jury as well. So you actually have 13 people sitting in the box but only 12 of them are gonna be jurors. The alternate is the person that, inevitably something always comes up when you have 12 different people, someone has child care issues, there's a death in the family someone's car breaks down and so you need to make sure that you have someone that can fill in for them if that happens, so that we don't have to do the whole process all over again.”
Alexis explains: "let's say you have an assault case, that's gonna go on a couple of days, a lot of the times the judges will allow an alternate juror to be placed with the jury as well. So you actually have 13 people sitting in the box but only 12 of them are gonna be jurors. The alternate is the person that, inevitably something always comes up when you have 12 different people, someone has child care issues, there's a death in the family someone's car breaks down and so you need to make sure that you have someone that can fill in for them if that happens, so that we don't have to do the whole process all over again."
Answered by Alexis Austin Litle · Watch clip ↗Each answer links directly to the source where a Right Law Group attorney addressed this question.
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