A lone juror yesterday wrote to Southern District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan asking to be taken off the jury in the trial of accused U.S. embassy bomber Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani. “My conclusion is not going to change,” she wrote without indicating her position. “I feel (I am being) attacked for my conclusion.” The woman asked to be relieved and replaced by an alternate.

The Ghailani defense team moved for a mistrial, a motion the judge denied. Instead, he reread part of his charge urging jurors to “discuss and weigh your respective opinions dispassionately.” The judge said that “each of you must decide the case for yourself, but you should do so only after consideration of the case with your fellow jurors, and you should not hesitate to change an opinion when convinced that it is erroneous.” The move for a mistrial came after defense lawyer Peter Quijano expressed concern the juror might be coerced into changing her view of the evidence and vote to convict Mr. Ghailani in the al-Qaida conspiracy to bomb embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. As an alternative, Mr. Quijano asked for a “modified Allen charge”—a variation on the instruction given to a jury that reports a deadlock to get back to work, resume deliberations and take a fresh view of the evidence. Defense lawyer Michael Bachrach proposed such a charge in a letter to the judge, saying it appeared the jury was “hopelessly deadlocked” and that just cause does not exist to dismiss the juror.

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