Rule 47.Jurors

Rule 47 covers three separate stages of a South Carolina jury trial: picking the jury, seating backups in case something goes wrong, and keeping the jury sealed off from the outside world once it starts deciding the case. Under subsection (a), the trial judge decides who asks the questions during jury selection. The judge can run the whole examination alone, hand it to the lawyers, or do some mix of both — letting counsel add follow-up questions or submitting counsel's written questions in the judge's own words. Either way, the goal is the same: surface bias or conflicts before twelve strangers become the fact-finders in someone's case.

Subsection (b) lets the court seat up to six alternate jurors alongside the regular panel. Alternates go through the same selection process, take the same oath, and sit through the same evidence as the regular jurors — the only difference is they step in only if a seated juror can't finish the trial. Because losing a juror mid-trial without a backup can force a mistrial, alternates are a cushion against that risk. The rule also hands each side extra peremptory challenges when alternates are in play: one added strike for one or two alternates, two added strikes for three or four, and three added strikes for five or six. Those extra strikes can only be used against alternate candidates, not folded into the strikes used on the regular panel.

Subsection (c) addresses what happens when deliberations run late. Rather than force a jury to keep working past a reasonable hour, the court can send jurors to sleeping quarters for the night and resume the next morning. Whether overnight or during the trial day, the rule requires the jury to stay together, kept apart from the public, and watched over by bailiffs. No one is permitted to communicate with a juror during this period, and the rule frames the whole point as protecting the jury from any outside influence while it weighs the evidence.