Would this make Jury Duty better for you?

[Kooks and Bay Bay]

Personally yeah I do think you should be paid. I mean its very much a job.

But also the whole process is just such BS that I don't want to deal with.
You get a letter.
You wait around stressed as to whether you'll even have to go.
Then you go and you may or may not be picked.
And then you may or may not even end up doing it especially for lcoal dumb crap where someone has right up to their court time to decide on a plea deal.

Just do the BS over the phone and then if you actually need me then make an appt like I have to for a Doctor and have a time limit of when people can decide to take a deal instead of the whole process be so up in the air.

 

[bluezy]

No amount of money would make me more likely to want to serve on jury duty. Moving the courthouse to a more central location might help, though. I've been called a few times but never selected for a jury. The county courthouse is about 30 miles away and is a 40 minute drive during the middle of the day with not much traffic. During morning rush hour, it's nearly an hour. The last time I got called for jury duty I ended up having a panic attack (I have medically documented anxiety issues including claustrophobia and agoraphobia) during the one-on-one interview portion of jury selection and the judge had to have a bailiff walk me out of the courtroom and just bring me back in when the jury was announced (shockingly, my number wasn't called). That was 6 or 7 years ago and I haven't been called since then. Prior to that I was getting a summons every 2 years over the previous 10 years.

 

[NannyBeBe]

Thankfully I was always excused from duty and am now beyond the age to be called. Nothing could make me want to serve because our jury system is so corrupt.

 

[disneychrista]

I'd prefer a parking pass into an assigned lot and a coffee/water/lunch stipend (going rate for the area of duty).

Does your employer give you a lunch stipend? I get the complaints about losing on a days wages and having to pay for parking. but not the they should provide you with coffee & lunch. Why? What's the reasoning?

 

[tvguy]

I'd prefer a parking pass into an assigned lot and a coffee/water/lunch stipend (going rate for the area of duty).

Around here, if you gave the parking pass free, $35/day would cover the daily meal and beverage need.
If you didn't, you'd probably need $70/day.

Forget a "payment" - and this way, everyone still gets the same for the duty.

We have free parking here, but no "meal money".

 

[Skippyboo]

I have Jury Duty for the first time the week of Sept 30. My company will still pay me. I have to show up in person for the first day. Hopefully not picked. My jury questionnaire had 2 questions about having Allstate and State Farm insurance. I have State Farm so hopefully they won’t want me.

 

[Kooks and Bay Bay]

I have Jury Duty for the first time the week of Sept 30. My company will still pay me. I have to show up in person for the first day. Hopefully not picked. My jury questionnaire had 2 questions about having Allstate and State Farm insurance. I have State Farm so hopefully they won’t want me.

See this is what I'm talking about.
If having one of those two insurance companies is going to disqualify you then it should have been an immediate okay we are done here no reason for you to come.

 

[tinkerbellandpeterpan]

Also, we get called (DH and I) every single year which I think is an absolutely ridiculous schedule.

 

[bcla]

We have free parking here, but no "meal money".

I served on jury duty twice. The first was in municipal court before California consolidated into just superior courts. But the local courthouse did have a parking lot where jurors could park. The next time in superior court our jury notice also included a parking pass. We could just that even if just a prospective juror could park, but there were limits to where. I do remember after being assigned, our baliff told us that we could park at pretty much any metered parking space in the area and she'd fix the tickets. But we'd preferably park in the areas specified by the parking pass. And we used the same parking pass through our entire jury service for 5 weeks.

These days my county doesn't provide any parking for jurors. I remember when I showed up I found a place to park a few blocks away without any specified time limit. And the jury notice is a postcard with most of the information available online and not printed in the notice.

 

[LoveDaisy]

My employer pays me my regular salary if I have jury duty. I was called earlier this year, they had a free parking lot for jurors. So the $100 a day is not an incentive. I was hoping to get picked, the case sounded interesting but I knew as soon as they interviewed me I would be dismissed because of my knowledge of how insurance companies work.

 

[disneychrista]

See this is what I'm talking about.
If having one of those two insurance companies is going to disqualify you then it should have been an immediate okay we are done here no reason for you to come.

Most likely the attorney's in the case won't even review the questionnaires until the day of jury selection. And it could be that one side WANTS people with first hand experience with the company's. Also just the fact that you are or have been a customer of said company does not automatically disqualify you, it only means they will want to ask you more questions.

 

[tvguy]

Most likely the attorney's in the case won't even review the questionnaires until the day of jury selection. And it could be that one side WANTS people with first hand experience with the company's. Also just the fact that you are or have been a customer of said company does not automatically disqualify you, it only means they will want to ask you more questions.

There are a lot of assumptions people make about who will not be selected for a Jury, and often those assumptions are not correct. I figured I would not get selected the first time I was called for Jury Duty because the Plaintiff's attorney used to work for a law firm that my MIL was the Business Manager of. And he was at my wedding. That did not get me kicked off. And two of the Jurors were Attorneys. Both worked for Government agencies, but not as Prosecutors or in an Courtroom capacity. They did not get kicked off. And to be honest, they were the most difficult Jurors during deliberations because they didn't agree with the Judge's instructions to the Jury on what the law was pertaining to our case. Apparently they missed that concept in law school.

 

[SteveH]

I have mixed feelings about payment for jury duty, but with high expense of parking and meals States/Feds need to do something to lessen the impact.

With all of the taxes and fees the State puts on employers the payment for jury duty isn't bad, but again there needs to be limits on this too. For a small employer in particular it's unreasonable to expect an employer to pay full wages, with no work being performed for more than 5 days - after that the State either needs to pay the wages or provide a tax credit to the employer. We don't keep any stipends our employees get, but our policy is they need to turn it in. Funny how some seem to forget we paid their wages while they were out.

 

[kdonnel]

See this is what I'm talking about.
If having one of those two insurance companies is going to disqualify you then it should have been an immediate okay we are done here no reason for you to come.

Having one of those two insurance companies will not disqualify you.

 

[_19disnA]

Throwing more money at an inefficient process doesn't resolve that issue. As others have mentioned, the current process wastes a lot of people's time sitting/waiting/doing nothing. And then you may get sent home without ever being on a jury. The time's I have been called for jury duty, the entire process was inefficient & poorly designed and could be setup to make better use of people's time.

 

[kdonnel]

Throwing more money at an inefficient process doesn't resolve that issue. As others have mentioned, the current process wastes a lot of people's time sitting/waiting/doing nothing. And then you may get sent home without ever being on a jury. The time's I have been called for jury duty, the entire process was inefficient & poorly designed and could be setup to make better use of people's time.

I know I got all my understanding about how the courts worked from watching prime time dramas and was shocked when I found out how it really worked when I was party to a lawsuit.

This is nothing quick or efficient about US courts.

I wonder how much of how courts work is codified in law and can not be easily changed, how much of it is tradition, and how much of it is bad employees of the court?

 

[SandyinMonterey]

County is Northern California raising Juror pay to $100 a day.

https://www.actionnewsnow.com/news/local/jurors-in-shasta-county-getting-pay-raise-as-part-of-pilot-program-for-juror-compensation/article_27dd71aa-6b05-11ef-9a74-4391be8591df.htm

I have to get up about 4 a.m. and be at a train station by 6 a.m. The parking is extremely small, about 20-25 spaces. Not nearly enough for commuters to the city. While $100 would be nice, it's not worth the hassle of getting into the city for jury duty.

 

[mistysue]

I always saw the bigger issue with jury duty to be children. I got called once, and selected to be on the jury. Except the hours I needed to be there would have required me to find someone last minute who could come over and get my elementary kids off to school, then watch them again after school... kids who I lived alone with, my husband working out of state every week, so doing this would have meant both parents taking off work the duration of the trial. DH was new at his job so it would have cost him his career. The judge went through the reasons to be exempt, childcare was not a reason, and then announced it would be an "up to 6 week" trial. It wouldn't matter if they paid more, there was no way to make this work. I completely panicked, at which point the judge discussed it with me and we determined this was not a good fit.

But there are stories all the time of judges who don't take sympathy like that. Some/Most people can come up with a day or two of spontaneous childcare, but things like people being on call for weeks or assigned to longer trials - the childcare is more of a hurdle than the pay even with pay being a massive issue for many.

 

[nancipants]

I agree with the previous post one hundred percent. I got called to jury duty two years ago and thank god, I had family nearby who could pick my son up from daycare that day. The courthouse for my county is an hour away, and the daycare was 45 minutes in the opposite direction, so if I'd gotten selected it would have been extremely inconvenient, if not impossible to manage considering my family was not always available. Now my son goes to a closer daycare, so my husband could pick him up without completely messing up his work schedule, but not everyone has the benefit of working from home like we do, or they have kids in school who need to be picked up earlier. They will excuse you from jury duty if you're a stay at home parent of a child younger than school age, but what about parents who work outside the home and have children the same age? It just doesn't make sense.

I have jury duty again coming up in a few weeks. If the courthouse was closer, I wouldn't mind as much. I wish they didn't summon us based on county, but rather the courthouse you lived closest too.

 

[TiggerTrigger]

I'm thankfully in a job where my employer pays me even if I'm called to serve. That being said, I loathe jury duty. Yeah, being paid more would be nice, but it's a nightmare. I live about 25 miles from the main court buildings in downtown, I have to fight nightmarish rush hour traffic to get there and back (like 1-1.5 hours each way), parking is also usually horrendous, most of the courthouses have extremely uncomfortable seating, last time I was in there the vending machines weren't working and the food options for our short time windows were extremely limited, jury duty days are typically longer than my standard work days, and there have been a few times where I have had some concerns for our safety.

On top of this, back in the early 2000s, I served on a case that lasted nearly a month. It was the civil side of a capital murder/capital attempted murder of two Houston Police officers. Every single freaking day that we left...there was press hovering. At the end of the trial, I received a scathing letter from one of the attorneys condemning the jury for our decisions...all because he wasn't allowed to present evidence that he was certain would have helped his clients. I had to report him to the judge and her clerk. It's really soured me to the whole process. I know it's my civic duty, but I feel like I've paid my civic dues with this one. It's not the only time I've served, but it was just too much. The times I was called when the kids were young and I didn't have transportation took years off my life trying to argue that I needed to be excused. Then there was the time that we sat there waiting for a case by livestream where we sat for hours waiting on the accused...just to have it settled while we sat. Wasting our time and causing us stress!