Rule 47.Jurors

Jury selection under Rule 47 splits authority between the bench and the bar. The court may examine prospective jurors to whatever extent it thinks appropriate, but it must also let the parties or their attorneys ask reasonable questions of their own. Neither side controls voir dire outright; the rule expects a working balance between judicial oversight and attorney participation.

Beyond the regular jury, the court may seat up to six alternate jurors, chosen, qualified, examined, and sworn the same way as the regular panel. Alternates step in, in the order called, for jurors who become unable or disqualified to serve before the jury retires to deliberate. Each side gets extra peremptory challenges to use only against alternates: one additional challenge if one or two alternates will be seated, two if three or four, three if five or six. An alternate who never replaces a regular juror can be discharged or temporarily excused once deliberations begin, and if later recalled, even for a second phase of a bifurcated trial, the court has to protect that juror from outside influence in the meantime. If deliberations had already started before an alternate steps in, the jury starts over from scratch.

A number of traditional voir dire and jury-management topics, such as impaneling the jury, the kinds and number of challenges, and discharging a jury without a verdict, are left to the statutes in RCW Title 4.44 rather than spelled out again in the rule itself. What Rule 47 does address directly is how the jury is cared for once trial is underway: jurors may separate during trial and deliberations unless the court finds good cause on the record for sequestration, and if they're kept together, an officer must shield them from outside communication about the case. Motions touching on separation or sequestration are argued outside the jury's presence.

Rule 47 also guarantees jurors the right to take written notes on the evidence in every case. Courts may let jurors keep those notes during recesses, though jurors can't share or discuss them with each other until deliberations formally begin. The notes stay confidential among the jurors who made them and must be destroyed immediately after the verdict comes in.