(Author's Note: I wrote most of this as I was waiting for my juror number (72) to be called on Monday, December 12th.)
Seventh Amendment: Right to a trial by jury
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.
A few weeks ago I received the dreaded jury duty notice in the mail. It is the first time I have ever been called to serve on a jury. I arrive in the jury room at about 7:50 AM.
While it is the defendants constitutional right to have a trial by jury, I look around the room in the basement of the Dane County Courthouse and see a whole lot of people who do not want to be here, myself included.
Why is it that no one really wants to serve on a jury? I know that if I were on trial I would hope that I would have a group of people on my jury that were enthusiastic about serving. I have no intention of trying to get out of serving and will do my civic duty if called upon.
However, as I sit here and wait I recall a time when I was in high school taking a business law class and took a tour of the courthouse. We sat in on a jury trial. My memories of that jury was seeing twelve very bored people sitting in the jury box. Where a couple of them struggled to stay to be awake. In the hands of these people the defendant's fate rested.
It is now 8:20 am and I am in orientation. The clerk of courts apologizes for calling us and then gives a speech saying how the lawyers fear us, the jurors. We are now watching a video on jury duty.
The video was interesting, going over the aspects of jury duty. Can't say I am enthusiastic about serving yet. We are now on a twenty-five minute break. So far, this is a lot like the Army—hurry up and wait. The 25 minute break has gone on to be an hour and 30 minutes so far...and counting.
The first batch of jurors has been called—and I am not in it.
It is noon, and the Jury Clerk has released juror numbers 39-96, so I am leaving and going back to work.
For my troubles as a juror I was paid the princely sum of $12.50. Parking cost me $6.50 (and I will not be reimbursed for parking). Had I been there a full day I would have been paid $25.00. This brings me to the part where this impacts labor.
I am lucky. I work for a company that pays me if I am called to serve on a jury, and even lets me keep my $12.50; however, what happens to the person who has an employer that does not pay you for the time you are on jury duty? What if you are a part-time employee who normally works during the hours that you are serving on a jury?
According to the Clerk of Courts website:
The law provides that an employer must grant an employee a leave of absence, without loss of time in service for the period of jury duty. No employer may use absence due to jury duty as a basis for discharging an employee or for any disciplinary action against the employee.
Jurors are paid $12.50 for any service up to 4 hours and $25.00 for any service over 4 hours in one day. A majority of Dane County employers continue to pay employees while they are on jury duty, but such employers have a right to have their employees’ juror fees (excluding mileage) paid over to them.
Note: I am using Dane County Wisconsin as an example...laws regarding jurors vary widely across the country.
Your employer does not have to pay you while you are on jury duty and while you cannot lose your job for serving on a juror, your employer does not have to schedule make-up hours and it is doubtful that $25.00 a day will replace your lost income. Even if you earn minimum wage you would earn $58.00 before taxes for an eight-hour day.
How do you make up those lost wages? Add on top of that that meals are not provided and you are either going without lunch (the first day, when you don't know that you can brown bag it), or spending at least $5.00 for lunch and you also have to pay for four hours of parking. In my case parking was $6.50. So in essence I only earned $6.00 for four hours of my time. Again, if you are a part-time minimum wage worker, how do you make up for that? Instead of earning the $58.00 you would have earned during the day you made $25.00, then you have to take out $6.50 for parking. Now you are down to $18.50. You go without lunch for your eight hour day—so you earned $2.31 an hour for being on jury duty. No wonder people don't want to perform their civic duty and serve on a jury.
As I stated earlier, I am pretty lucky that my employer picks up the tab for jury duty. What happens to people called to jury duty and that tab is not picked up? I do not know why payment for jury duty is so low; however, I have a pretty good guess why it is—it costs money and therefore conservatives/Republicans are against it.