Jury Duty

I was on jury duty yesterday, in the LA Criminal Court System. It was the first time I had been called since 2001, and there were a few differences. The courthouse where I served has moved to the “1 day/1 jury” system, so if you don’t get put on a jury the first day, your service is over. That was a vast improvement over the last time I was there. In 2001, you kept coming back for 10 days if you didn’t get on a jury or if the jury was dismissed prior to deliberating.

I didn’t serve on a jury, but I noticed a couple of interesting things about the process:

• Pay is higher than it used to be – $15/day plus $.38 per mile for transportation expenses. While this is higher than the $5 day of the 1990s, it is still really cheap, especially compared to federal court, which pays $40/day plus mileage. Assuming an 8 hour day, jury service pays a little more than 50¢ per hour. This is about the rate one gets in prison.
  I heard a lot of people in the jury assembly room grumbling about that, as their employers don’t pay for jury service.
• Not having an employer pay for jury service or being self-employed is no longer considered an excuse. This can make jury duty very expensive. My employer doesn’t pay for jury service and I estimate that yesterday cost me about $100. The jury assembly officer said that the average duration of jury service when on a jury was 5-7 days. If I had been selected, I could easily have been out upwards of $500, and might not have been able to pay all of my bills this month.
• As part of the “1 day/1 jury” system, the court doesn’t pay for the first day. This allows them to call a lot more jurors than are actually needed. Yesterday, there were approximately 300 people serving, but only 3 juries were empanelled all day. At 12 people per jury, this means that 90% of the people called for service yesterday weren’t placed on a jury. About half the jurors (myself among them) weren’t even called once, which means we just sat around in the jury assembly room all day.
• The court building seemed somewhat run down. The bathrooms had locks broken off and some of the toilet seats were etched. There wasn’t a great deal of graffiti, though.
• One jury that was empanelled was dismissed, as the defendant escaped. The people on that jury were sent back to the assembly room to see if they would be needed for a different panel, said fact about which I heard several of them complaining.

I definitely have mixed feelings about the system. While I feel it is definitely less of a time burden than before, I definitely think it should pay a fair amount more than it does, at least minimum wage.

I know that due to challenges for cause and preemptory challenges it is impossible to estimate precisely what the need for jurors will be, but they can do better than they did yesterday. The system is very inefficient and more effort needs to be put in to accurately gauging the real need for jurors and calling up the correct amount.