what should jury's get paid?

Letter writer John K Collins has written a good letter to the editor of "The Times" I dont have a link sorry.

He writes about how its time the Jury Act is rewritten and how Jury members recieve no pay for first two weeks of jury duty and a mere $30 a day when/if they do get paid.

One can argue its thier civic duty to server on a jury and that paying them makes it less of a civic duty. Well that one would not be me arguing that. If judges, lawyers, police, court workers and everyone else under the sun recieved decent pay to be at court, so too should the Jury member.
Would you end up with people trying to extend the trial ala Paauullleeyy Shores excellent movie "Jury Duty"? Perhaps... but I doubt that would be a significant enough occassion to warrant not paying these people a living wage.

My take. $90 tax free from day one. Including Jury selection.

plus catering.

Damn straight plus catering.

but healthy grown in Manitoba foods only of course

Are Arctic Char and Bison Manitoba foods?

I worked for a company that paid employees when they had to go to court. Perhaps the legislation should be rewritten where employees pay staff and company applies for reimbursement. Just musin'.

We consider it to be a civic duty to sit on a jury when required to do so, so we provide a paid absence if summoned for jury duty, but you have to give back whatever you get. Same goes if you are subpoened to be a witness.

My wages were paid by my employer when I was on a jury; If it had been longer than the two weeks and I had gotten the $30, I was expected to reimburse that to my employer.

But there were people on the same jury that had to sit all day in court and then go work evenings at their job because they did not have such a benefit, which I thought kind of sucked. The ones that did were self-employed in the service industry (such as hairstyling).

I *think* if you have financial hardship by losing income, that is an excuse for getting out of jury duty though.

The company being reimbursed by the goverment for your time would start to pile up. One thing that was looked at was 60 percent of it paid back to your employer. Remember the committee don't know what happened.

darkwind wrote:My wages were paid by my employer when I was on a jury; If it had been longer than the two weeks and I had gotten the $30, I was expected to reimburse that to my employer.

But there were people on the same jury that had to sit all day in court and then go work evenings at their job because they did not have such a benefit, which I thought kind of sucked. The ones that did were self-employed in the service industry (such as hairstyling).

I *think* if you have financial hardship by losing income, that is an excuse for getting out of jury duty though.

Thats true. My Dad was summoned for jury duty and he explained to them that he had a trip planned to Wales and that the tickets were purchased and were non-refundable. He was asked to provide a copy of the ticket and they excused him from jury duty.

How can one weasel out of jury duty?

*Tell the court you have been reading about the case and believe the accused is as guilty as sin.
*Tell the court you cannot take time off work due to financial hardship.
*Tell the court you have to take care of your children because your wife is an alcoholic.

Personally I'd do my duty for any number of reasons. Mostly I'd like to see our judicial system in action up close and personal.

Agreed, I'd do it and I think I would enjoy it, but if there were circumstances which put me in a real bind, I would try to get out of it.

I would love to be on Jury duty, cant understand how i have never been called for duty when I know people who have been called more then once. Shouldn't this be some sort of Queue? Ie start at the top of the voters list and work your way down?
BUT... I could not afford to be on Jury duty for any real amount of time.. I would have to burn vacation days.

Just point at the judge and yell "I THINK THAT ONE DID IT!!!"

you WILL be dismissed!

I got out of serving because I answered that I thought all people charged were innocent! Dozen other reasons.

I got out of jury duty by stating that at the time I was employed on a contract basis, and being unable to work during that service, it would be undue financial hardship.

Just tell them you believe that justice is corrupt .

Personally I think jury members should be compensated for whatever their current pay rate is (based on their most recent 2 paycheques) with a set minimum for those who may be unemployed or self-employed.

If the "crown" picks people who make $500/day to sit on a jury...so be it...it's SUPPOSED to be random right?

Yet another advantage of not getting my Citizenship .