Giantaxe

Sure, but what I've observed when I've gone to the courthouse (twice in the last four fours) is attempted excuses that go way beyond the legally-required "hardship".

mrken30

Hardship is always subjective, I have known people earning way into 6 figures claim hardship. they may not be able to make their yacht payments. Just have to listen to some of the comments during the BHS interviews. Then there are people in extreme hardship that just comply because they don't have the skill or the knowledge to tell anyone.

Asg123

I'm not sure why they don't just choose out of the people who don't make excuses. When I went only a fraction of the people were called and one of them was a lady who had made an excuse but whose excuse the judge had obviously not thought acceptable. She continued to make excuses and the judge did not put her on the jury but had her stay behind for contempt of court. Most people get their normal pay in addition to a small fee for jury duty plus mileage, and there were dozens of people who did not make excuses and were willing to do jury duty but were not chosen, I don't know why the judge couldn't have taken one of them instead of that lady who was not good at making an excuse acceptable to her.

Giantaxe

In California, at least, it's not for the judge to decide who is on the jury. The judge's role is to deal with hardship and other excuses (such as excusing people who have been victims of a crime similar to the one being tried, have close relatives in law enforcement, know the defendant or victims etc) and then oversee jury selection by the prosecution and defence attorneys, who both have a number of challenges to potential jurors. Potential jurors are selected at random by the clerk of the court from the available pool and then subject to questioning/challenge/dismissal by the two attorneys. For the murder trial I was on, about 600 people were called and jury selection took 2 1/2 days to end up with 12 plus 6 alternates. If the pool had been limited to those who didn't make excuses of some sort, I suspect it would have been touch and go whether we'd have got a jury.

mrken30

This is from my employee handbook. I work for one of the largest non-profits in the country.

Jury Duty
a. Jury Duty is an important civic responsibility which an employee may be called
upon to assume.
1). Time off for Jury Duty will be granted without pay.
2). Because of the nature of employee assignments, it may not always be
possible to release employees to serve on Jury Duty at the time they are
initially requested. PTO may be used, if available. Employees may be
asked to seek an extension

Asg123

I see, so a large proportion of people can be eliminated, 600..down to 18. I suppose in a murder trial the attorneys might want to be very selective, and also people might be more prone to make excuses because they're not comfortable having to make a difficult decision.

In my case, it was a civil case and the jury had to decide on a claim and come up with a figure for compensation. There was a pool of about 100 people, most people didn't offer excuses and of those who did the judge accepted about 10. About 20 or 25 people were then chosen who were then asked questions by the attorneys. One person continued to say that she couldn't serve and maybe was a bit rude and got into trouble with the judge. From what you say, it's not the judge who decides who goes on the jury, so it must have been the attorneys who selected 8 of us to serve, plus a number of alternates. It all only took a couple of hours. So in this case there was no shortage of people and no need to force anyone to serve, they could have easily just selected from those willing.

I see now though that in a serious criminal case excusing everyone who doesn't want to serve could be a problem.


mrken Time off for Jury Duty will be granted without pay.

I worked for a company employing over a million people and it was company policy to pay for time off for jury duty (I got paid very little but I did get paid when I did jury duty!)

mrken30

I work for a small company only employing 170,000 people. I guess that's why we don't get paid.

dc koop

No doubt the same people who would expect a jury panel present if ever they were facing a trial

dc koop

There should be a law in effect that all employers will pay for workers called for jury duty.

The old excuse that small businesses cannot afford to pay employees is just completely invalid. How many employees of a small business are called for jury service at the same time? The average length of jury service is around five days.

When a trial is expected to run for a long period of time the judge will ask for people amongst those called to volunteer to sit on the jury. Those that do are people who have no problem with financial or domestic issues. That's my experience anyway.

Bob

Yeah, not to mention, well down my way, they only compensate you after 3 days and then it's $50 a day.

Employer is meant to pay you your regular wage for the first 3 days, but most just say no works, no money.

If you're in Boston and had to drive in, you're spending $40 a day on parking.

Where we are, would have to go to Woburn and there's no way to get there by public transport and it's the polar opposite side of the county to us, a good hour or more away in the morning commute.

Oh well, hope you're feeling better Lansbury!

scrubbedexpat097

Ouch! Hope you are recovering

lansbury

Thanks on the mend, at least I can put weight on that foot now.

mrken30

You must live in a rich state, here it's only $10 a day. They do have free parking if available. The bus ticket to get there and back plus a subway sandwich costs more than $10

Guindalf

$35 here.

Pulaski

I'm glad to hear that you're on the mend, you old fool. .... Is that what you meant by adding insult to injury?