A juror has been discharged after he fell asleep and started snoring during the opening of a people-smuggling trial in Birmingham.
The panel member was replaced on Tuesday, less than an hour into the crown’s opening speech.
The judge, Dean Kershaw, interrupted prosecutor Kelly Brocklehurst’s speech to tell a juror on the back row of the jury bench: “You’re asleep, you’re snoring.”
After the juror was replaced following a delay and the jury returned to court, Brocklehurst continued his speech by joking: “I clearly need to up my game – I assure you things will get more interesting.”
The case at Birmingham crown court was against Mai Van Nguyen, who denies involvement in a plot to smuggle Vietnamese people into the UK.
Prosecutors allege the 34-year-old received immigrants who had been moved by others from the south coast of England to the Midlands, finding them housing and illegal forms of labour.
As well as “receiving them and spiriting them away into the community”, Brocklehurst alleged, Nguyen “took whatever measures were needed to house them”.
He told jurors that two other men had been convicted of their part in the conspiracy last December before adding: “Together with others, these conspirators engaged in this enterprise for commercial gain.
“There was nothing altruistic about this.”
The trial continues.
