The daily pay rate for Alameda County jurors is rising from barely the cost of a sandwich and chips to $100 a day — a significant jump in expensive Bay Area.
The sixfold increase in jurors’ daily allowance, which begins Tuesday, comes courtesy of a pilot program among seven counties that aims to finally boost jurors’ pay beyond a few cups of coffee each day. The goal, court officials say, is to stem the tide of people who claim financial hardship and beg out of their jury service every day.
The change drew praise from Alameda County Public Defender Brendon Woods, who lauded the new pay rate as a chance for lower-income residents to finally serve on juries with greater regularity.
“Far too often when our Black clients go to trial, there is not a single person on the jury who looks like them,” Woods said in a statement. “That’s not justice. Paying more means more Black and Brown people serving on juries, and that’s going to mean fairer trials for our clients and communities.“
For decades, the daily allowance for jurors in Alameda County matched that of the state — a mere $15 a day. At that rate, jurors could barely buy a basic lunch at most of the delis surrounding the courthouse.
That’s an important measure: Jurors do not receive money for meals while serving.
The new pilot program was created through legislation passed state lawmakers in 2022, known as Assembly Bill 1981. Through it, the Judicial Council of California hired a consultant to study whether higher compensation rates could boost juror participation and broaden the diversity of juror panels.
That consultant, the National Center for State Courts, recently started surveying jurors in Alameda County and will continue to do so in the months ahead to determine whether the pilot program is working.
The other counties involved in the pilot include El Dorado, Fresno, Imperial, Monterey, San Bernardino and Shasta counties.
The new pay rates aren’t permanent. The $100-a-day paychecks will only be available for two years, or until funding for the $27-million program is gone.
Little data exists on how often the state’s current reimbursement rate factors into people seeking financial hardship exemptions.
Several interns for the Alameda County Superior Court sat in on numerous jury selections in May and June of this year and found that roughly a third of the jurors were excused for hardships, such as financial concerns or pre-scheduled vacations, Rosynsky said. The list of cases that the interns observed was not all-encompassing, meaning that the exemption rate could actually be far higher or lower.
Yet even getting people to show up for jury duty can be a struggle, Rosynsky said.
Only 34% of the people responded to their jury summons from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022, according to the county’s former jury case management vendor. That represents the most recent data reported to the court on juror appearance rates, Rosynsky said.
Despite low juror participation rates, Alameda County court officials haven’t typically struggled to fill juries here, Rosynsky said. But the composition of those juries often came down to who could take time off work, or who could convince their employer to keep paying them while they served — or those for whom working is not a concern at all.
“You get a lot of retirees — it’s people who can afford to be on a jury,” Rosynsky said. “So I think the hope here is that we can get some folks who wouldn’t otherwise afford to be on a jury actually can be on it.”
Along with the daily pay raise, jurors can expect to see an increase in their mileage reimbursement for travel to and from the courthouse. That rate increases Tuesday to 67 cents a mile, nearly double the previous rate of 34 cents a mile.
Anyone using public transportation on the way to jury service can receive an additional $12 a day on top of their daily reimbursement total, the superior court announced this week.
The reimbursements begin the second day of a juror’s service, regardless of whether that person has been selected for a jury. The length of the jury selection process can vary widely, with more complex or high-profile cases taking weeks or longer.
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Source: www.mercurynews.com