BY ANDY GARDNER

North Country This Week

CANTON -- A juror was dismissed from the Christopher Hebert murder trial and has been replaced by an alternate.

After returning to court from noon recess, Judge Jerome Richards cleared the courtroom for about an hour.

"I've had to discharge [the juror] from her service. You're not to speculate about why," the judge said to the remaining jurors. "The reason she was discharged is not the issues in this case."

The female juror was replaced by a female alternate, keeping the juror count at nine men and three women. Three alternates remain, two men and one woman.

After dismissing the juror and moving up the alternate, the trial resumed with testimony from Urfan Mukhtar, a New York State Police forensic investigator. He is supervisor of forensic services in the state police DNA analysis section in Albany.

His testimony follows that of Senior Investigator Theodore Levison, who testified that he took a DNA sample from Lacey Yekel's mother.

Hebert is on trial for second-degree murder, accused of killing Yekel in 2014.