Handle JSON Decode Error when nothing returned

There is a rule in Python programming called "it is Easier to Ask for Forgiveness than for Permission" (in short: EAFP). It means that you should catch exceptions instead of checking values for validity.

Thus, try the following:

try:
    qByUser = byUsrUrlObj.read()
    qUserData = json.loads(qByUser).decode('utf-8')
    questionSubjs = qUserData["all"]["questions"]
except ValueError:  # includes simplejson.decoder.JSONDecodeError
    print('Decoding JSON has failed')

EDIT: Since simplejson.decoder.JSONDecodeError actually inherits from ValueError (proof here), I simplified the catch statement by just using ValueError.

If you don't mind importing the json module, then the best way to handle it is through json.JSONDecodeError (or json.decoder.JSONDecodeError as they are the same) as using default errors like ValueError could catch also other exceptions not necessarily connected to the json decode one.

from json.decoder import JSONDecodeError


try:
    qByUser = byUsrUrlObj.read()
    qUserData = json.loads(qByUser).decode('utf-8')
    questionSubjs = qUserData["all"]["questions"]
except JSONDecodeError as e:
    # do whatever you want

//EDIT (Oct 2020):

As @Jacob Lee noted in the comment, there could be the basic common TypeError raised when the JSON object is not a str, bytes, or bytearray. Your question is about JSONDecodeError, but still it is worth mentioning here as a note; to handle also this situation, but differentiate between different issues, the following could be used:

from json.decoder import JSONDecodeError


try:
    qByUser = byUsrUrlObj.read()
    qUserData = json.loads(qByUser).decode('utf-8')
    questionSubjs = qUserData["all"]["questions"]
except JSONDecodeError as e:
    # do whatever you want
except TypeError as e:
    # do whatever you want in this case