Technically, they’re tied with Nebraska, but I will admit that I was surprised too.
I live in PA and they pay 9$ per hour and a whopping 17 cents per mile and it takes my county a month to mail you your check. Employer must hold your job but does not have to pay you. I have emailed the Governor’s Office regarding this. Nine dollars per day was imolemented in 1959 when minimum wage was 1$ per hour and 25$ er day after serving 3 days.
You tell the judge it’s a financial hardship for you to serve for a long trial. They should know what kind of trial has a chance of running longer than 1 day and excuse you. If not tell the defense attorney about it and how you can’t be an objective juror under the circumstances. He’s sure to object to you serving.
I actually was just on a jury a month ago, and no, it’s not 9-5 every day, it’s more like the latter. My trial was pretty short, but it went something like:
Monday: Report to the courthouse at 8am. Check in, fill out some paperwork, hang out in the jury lounge until they tell you to report to a courtroom. Judge explains how things will work. Lunch. Voir dire. Go home for the day.
Tuesday: Report to the courtroom at 10am, as the lawyers needed to work on some stuff behind the scenes before the trial began. Opening arguments, which were pretty short. Then a really long lunch break, as witnesses weren’t scheduled until 1:30. Heard prosecution’s witnesses, went home probably a little before 5:00.
Wednesday: Report at 10am again, more stuff happening behind the scenes in the courtroom. They didn’t actually bring us into the courtroom until more like 11. The defense presented one witness. We went home around noon (But as far as my employer knows I was on jury duty all day 
).
Thursday: Report at 9am. Heard closing arguments. The bailiff showed us to the jury room, then dismissed us for lunch. After lunch we had as much time as we needed to deliberate. We reached a verdict just before the end of the day. The judge said it was too late in the day to read the verdict that day, so we had to report back on Friday.
Friday: Report at 10am. Assemble in the courtroom, read the verdict (It’s not like on TV; the foreman just hands a form to the bailiff, who hands it to the clerk, who reads it). We were dismissed at like 10:30.
Yep, I got $15/day, first day unpaid. Plus mileage to/from the courthouse, based on your zip code. And if you take public transit they give you free light rail tickets (at least in Sacramento). I assumed the free light rail tickets were instead of mileage, but my pay included mileage even though I used public transit and got the free tickets. Unless that was a mistake.
Most people who work for the government get paid their regular salary while on jury duty. Depending on the city/county/state/agency, you may then have to turn over your jury check. But that’s small enough that it’s not a problem.
Retired people still have whatever they have for retirement.
Most corporations will pay you while you’re on jury duty as well.
That was the policy of my former employer. We were encouraged to donate our jury pay to the charity of our choice.
Giving the money to the company was supposed to be the policy where I worked but when I got paid for 2 days, maybe 30 bucks, I had to find the company treasurer to do something with the check. Apparently nobody thought the tiny amounts were worth collecting.
They also gave us a free bus pass and/or stamped parking for one of the downtown parking structures. In my case, the court is two blocks from the building I work in, and we have free parking in the structure attached to our building.
I was a contractor/consultant for a number of years, basically a well-paid hourly worker. Although I worked for corporations & at big corporations I only got paid for hours worked. Holidays sucked, especially the ones you didn’t really care about because I’d lose a day’s pay that week since I couldn’t work on the holiday.
Although I never needed it, that was an automatic get-out-of-jury-duty free card. “Your honor, if I don’t work, I don’t get paid so I have a significant financial interest in ending the trial quickly & am disincentivized from holding out in the interest of justice. Surely, you have to excuse me from the case.”
You don’t even need the last part. I’ve never seen a judge deny a request to be excused from someone who said they won’t get paid and it would be a financial hardship to serve.
I’d love to do jury duty, but if I do not work I don’t need my employees, so they would lose out. I’ve been called for jury duty several times, but when I explain my employees financial situation I’ve been excused each time.
Exactly. I have sat through plenty of vior dires and there is no need to be a smart ass. It’s just, “I’m self employed”, “OK, excused”
That always worked for me when I had my own business. I finished by career in a regular job that paid me while on jury duty and I was happy to serve in the sense of doing my duty as a good citizen despite being unhappy to spend a lot of time waiting and worse listening to some overly dramatic judge explaining the process.
It was a little trickier when I had to keep one leg in a brace and couldn’t keep it bent. I explained this to the jury commissioner’s office and they immediately said I was excused but asked for a letter from my doctor confirming I was being treated for a knee problem so they wouldn’t need any other follow-up. This turned out to be an issue with my doctor who responded that he wouldn’t write a letter excusing me from jury duty. It took quite a few phone calls to get him to understand he wasn’t being asked to excuse me from jury duty, he has no authority to do so, I was already excused, and what was requested was documentation that I was being treated by a doctor for a knee problem.
emphasized text
When you are under 70 in California to be excused for medical reasons you will need documentation about the medical condition. If you are over 70 you can be excused for medical reasons and no documentation is required.
My last job company policy was you could get jury duty pay for up to two weeks and any additional time would be vacation or unpaid. But in our union contract was a clause stating that if the jury duty was over two weeks there would be no loss of pay. And the time spent on Jury duty was to be counted as hours of work. So if you were there a half day you should report to work for the other half. And if you worked nights and were there 8 hours and the employer want you to still come into work it was all OT. That meant the JUry duty time was strait time, the 1st 2 hours of your shift was time and a half, and the last 6 hours would be double time.
They’re pretty cool about it here from what I’ve seen so long as you’re willing to reschedule. I saw a person show up with a knee brace and they said they expected to be all healed in two months or something and they we deferred.
Yeah, I was a Fed and they called me in for the Civil Grand jury, but they paid me. I noted some unhappiness from mt manager, even tho it was generally just a day and half per week.
Pretty much all Government jobs pay you while on JD, but for the feds you are supposed to send them your justy pay.
Any company that doesnt is- IMHO Un-American and evil.
Many Counties pay more, especially for GJ work.
I’ve heard as a teacher, No matter where I live I can pretty much get an automatic deferral to summer. I have yet to test it out.
Once I got called with about 100 other people for a big criminal trial that had received lots of press. They started asking by a show of hands who had financial hardship, childcare problems, etc.
I ended up getting excused due to scheduled travel, but not before the judge made specific offers to call people’s bosses when they complained about getting a hard time at work for potentially missing two weeks of work.
I started a trial in June one year. It seemed like half the panel were teachers. Then it dawned on me. As you say, they all got deferrals.