[QUOTE=CarnalK]
Your “job” as juror is simply to listen to a recount of events and give your common man’s opinion. Anyone who isn’t mentally disabled can do that and to compare it to the jobs of the trained professionals is a little silly, frankly. And in case you missed it, I said somewhere earlier in the thread that I agree $10 was ludicrous but I fear that much higher pay may be problematic and I disagree that juror pay should be linked to regular income.
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But you are overlooking the fact that a “trained professional” like your fireman or police officer, or a doctor, lawyer, engineer, rocket scientist, whatever, is forced, against his will, in a free country, to work for $10 a day. This represents a tremendous uncompensated gap in his potential vs. actual compensation. It would be like forcing this person against his will to stand in a field and throw dirt in his face for 10 cents a day. You could argue that any animal could do that for free, and the 10 cents a day is a gift. It amounts to theft.
But, you agree that is ludicrous, but don’t think that juror pay should be related to income. So what, in your esteemed opinion, should a juror make? Are we on a union scale where every juror gets paid the same, or are we on a merit system where a high school dropout makes less than a high school graduate who makes less that a person with some college..etc..
My disillusion with this is that if the government took someone off of the street against his will (count 1) and made him chop weeds alongside the highway (count 2) and paid him less than 80 cents per hour (count 3) there would be judges lined up to outlaw the practice, and attorney frothing at the mouth with their hard dicks in anticipation of their 33 percent commissions.
But why? Jury service is necessary, but so is keeping the highways clean. But no matter to you, because your only answer to the obvious is that it would cost the taxpayers too much money. How about eliminating trials altogether and have the police summarily execute people for traffic violations? No trials, no juries, no pay (except for the 5 bucks a day for the officer) and lower taxes..