diff --git a/.circleci/run-tests.sh b/.circleci/run-tests.sh
index bf1b6ee8e..48f500280 100755
--- a/.circleci/run-tests.sh
+++ b/.circleci/run-tests.sh
@@ -88,9 +88,5 @@ if [ -n "${ARTIFACTS}" ]; then
 
     # Create a junitxml results area.
     mkdir -p "$(dirname "${JUNITXML}")"
-    # Always succeed even if subunit2junitxml fails.  subunit2junitxml signals
-    # failure if the stream it is processing contains test failures.  This is
-    # not what we care about.  If we cared about it, the test command above
-    # would have signalled failure already and we wouldn't be here.
-    "${BOOTSTRAP_VENV}"/bin/subunit2junitxml < "${SUBUNIT2}" > "${JUNITXML}" || true
+    "${BOOTSTRAP_VENV}"/bin/subunit2junitxml < "${SUBUNIT2}" > "${JUNITXML}" || "${alternative}"
 fi