United States v. Johnson
Split Score
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This score (0-100) indicates how likely this case is to be reviewed by the Supreme Court based on:
Case Summary
Disposition
Affirmed
The Second Circuit, sitting en banc on a petition for rehearing, declined to revisit a panel decision that had affirmed Rickey Johnson’s convictions despite the district court’s dismissal of a twelfth juror before deliberations began. The majority of active judges agreed that the Rule 23(b) error was subject to harmless-error review because only constitutional violations may qualify as structural errors, while several judges dissented, arguing that the denial of a twelve-person jury is a structural error regardless of its constitutional status and warrants automatic reversal.
Circuit Split Identified
Legal Issue
Whether an error must implicate a constitutional right to be deemed a 'structural error' that automatically requires reversal, and, by extension, whether a Rule 23(b) violation (proceeding with eleven jurors without consent) can ever be structural.
Circuit Positions
Structural errors must involve the deprivation of a constitutional right; non-constitutional defects (including an eleven-person jury) are reviewed for harmless error.
Certain non-constitutional errors, such as dismissing the twelfth juror contrary to Rule 23(b), are structural and automatically reversible.
Conflict Summary
Most circuits hold that only violations of fundamental constitutional rights can constitute structural errors, making non-constitutional trial defects—such as a Rule 23(b) jury-size violation—subject to harmless-error review. A minority of circuits have held that some non-constitutional defects, including Rule 23(b) violations, are structural and require automatic reversal.