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The Sheldon Silver corruption trial has already lost its first juror.
The juror begged off the case so she could return to her job helping the homeless — after she found out she would only receive her salary for the first 10 days of the expected six-week trial, court records show.
Raquel Morel, who had been Juror No. 4, sent a note to the judge Wednesday morning saying that her boss at Care for the Homeless felt it would “have a bad impact” if she was away for more than a month.
Morel later told Manhattan federal Judge Valerie Caproni that she called her employer’s human resources department during the lunch break and found out that she wouldn’t get paid “after Day No. 10.”
“It will be a hardship for me,” she said.
Morel also noted that she was the outreach coordinator for the Manhattan non-profit, and that none of the three staffers she supervised “have the training” to do her job.
“I would be prepared to harangue her boss about the possibility to get along without her for six weeks, but if she had told us from the get-go we would have excused her on the ground of hardship,” Caproni said before letting Morel go late Wednesday, according to a transcript.
Caproni also noted that with only three alternate jurors remaining, “it is going to be difficult from here on out for anyybody else to get off this jury.”
Silver’s trial kicked off on Tuesday.



