1. Of all the people who work in a courtroom, from the judge to the attorney to the bailiff to the clerk to the reporter to the janitor to the jury member, who earns the least amount of money?
2. Out of all of them, who has the most important job?
3. How is this fair?
4. If you were a defendant or a plaintiff in a courtroom, how would you feel if you found out that the judge or the clerk or even your attorney was making fifteen dollars a day?

Most people, when I ask them these questions reply with “If we had to pay the jury a decent wage we would have to raise taxes.”

To this I have a reply. How is this for an idea. Instead of paying me fifteen dollars a day why don’t I pay the court fifteen dollars a year, and if I get to sit as a juror you pay me from all the fifteen dollars a year you collect from all eligible voters in California. That would be 22,948,059 X $15.00 = $344,220,885.00 divided by 267,083 (the approximate number of people, including alternates who are seated in a jury every year in California) = $ 1,289.00 per person per trial, which usually lasts about five days. You would get paid $1,289.00 per trial no matter how long it lasts, whether it be a one day trial or a one month trial. If I compare that to a yearly salary it would come to
52 X $ 1,289.00 = $ 67,018.00 (approximately) a year which is a lot more than what the average person earns. I don’t think you would have too many people trying to get out of serving as a juror. Personally I wouldn’t mind having to pay $ 15.00 more in taxes and earn $ 1,289.00 every once in a while. We could put an end to the juror shortage and an end to this slavery.