Pay goes up for jurors with Commission vote

Getting jurors to show up remains a problem for courts

County Commissioners this month are giving those who are making lifechanging decisions a much-deserved raise when they are serving on behalf of the citizens of Polk County.

Jurors who report to serve either on a grand jury or the typical trial jury will now be getting an increase from the sum of $25 to $40 per day for hearing testimony and evidence and making decisions.

Commissioners voted unanimously to accept the grand jury’s recommendation for a pay increase during the August 6 regular session earlier this week, but the amount of money individuals make per day might be only the tip of the iceberg in solving a larger problem.

The pay increase will go into effect starting with the next call for a grand or traverse jury to sit on cases.

Pay isn’t the only issue facing court officials seeking to ensure they have enough people to empanel a jury: Superior Court Clerk Stacie Baines has for several years found that despite getting a summons and facing real penalties for not showing up, the pool that does report is shrinking overall.

There’s real consequences individuals can face for ignoring a summons: a contempt of court charge, which can lead to fines and jail time imposed by a judge for willfully avoiding jury duty.

Jury duty is required for those called upon to serve, and the process is determined by both individuals on voter rolls and lists generated from the Department of Motor Vehicles for Polk County residents.

There are two types of juries that serve in courts: a grand jury and a traverse jury. The grand jury is the group who are empaneled for several reasons, but mainly to decide whether a criminal case has enough evidence to proceed to trial. When you hear about grand jury indictments in the news, this is what they generate. Grand juries also decide to make recommendations about other areas involving the judicial system – such as determining whether the county needs a new courthouse, or if juries should be paid more.

The other kind of jury is a traverse jury – the kind you know from Law & Order – and this is the group summoned to decide the guilt or innocence of a individual in a criminal trial, or in a civil trial which party is responsible in a lawsuit. When someone says the term “I had jury duty,” they usually mean a traverse jury.

Both types of jurors when called upon to serve are paid on a daily flat fee, which has been through the past years set at $25 a day. The grand jury had in a previous session in December 2023 recommended that juror pay be increased from $25 to $40 a day, and then in a new empaneled grand jury in July decided that pay should be increased from $25 to $50 a day.

The County Commission ultimately is the final arbiter of how much jurors are paid for their service in court, and despite the recommendation made during the last grand jury, they settled on the price of $40 a day to pay jurors.

Despite the increase in pay, during the August 6 session Baines said it remains a major issue on getting people to show up for jury duty of any kind.

She said around a third of the jurors called upon out of a typical pool of 200 sought for service show up to the courthouse to perform their duty.

A quarter of those summoned are providing legitimate reasons why they can’t perform jury duty, such as providing a doctor’s note, being a full time student, a primary care giver of a child 6 or under, being an active service member in the armed forces, or over the age of 70 and filling out a form to seek to be removed specifically for their age.

Then there’s the rest of the jury pool that isn’t showing up to serve.

Several factors play into the problem: for example, employees are fearful they’ll lose their jobs if they report after being threatened by management, or summons show up to addresses that are out of date, to people who haven’t been cleared from voter rolls after they have moved away or are deceased, and many other factors that play into the problem.

Some just simply ignore the letter that shows up in the mail since no enforcement action is currently being taken to hold individuals responsible when they don’t report for jury duty.

Failure to show up for jury duty can come with criminal penalties and even jail time, but despite summons showing up in mailboxes with that specific warning the pool of people who report continues to shrink.

Commission Chair Hal Floyd asked Baines why the courts even bother to print the penalties on jury summons notices if they aren’t being enforced, but it is a requirement set for by judges and practices they have to follow by court rules whether enforcement is undertaken or not.

She also noted that the Polk County Sheriff’s Office has the responsibility for finding jurors who don’t report, but that practice hasn’t been enforced over the past few years.

Sheriff Johnny Moats explained that his deputies working courthouse duty were previously supplied a list, but haven’t been given one to chase down jurors since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Moats noted that his deputies are willing to reinstitute the practice when supplied with information of which jurors aren’t showing up. Determining who is intentionally avoiding jury duty or have missed it without malice will be one of the factors that play into how deputies handle that information going forward.

The penalties are real for those who fail to show up for jury duty: the court can impose hundreds of dollars of fines and several days in jail for people who are found in contempt of court for not participating in jury duty and showing up for selection when their summons arrive in the mail.

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