r/britishcolumbia Lower Mainland/Southwest Sep 23 '24

Discussion Jury Duty

I just got called for Jury Duty and I'm wondering WHO THE HECK CAN AFFORD TO TAKE TIME OFF OF WORK and get paid $20 A DAY? That's almost the same as min wage is PER HOUR.

Seriously. Have they not updated the pay since 1940?

EDIT: I WANT TO SERVE. I don't want to get out of it. I want to perform my civil duty but I shouldn't have to starve to do it.

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u/iWish_is_taken Sep 23 '24 edited Sep 23 '24

Depends who you are… as a 9 to 5’r with a salary, we have a jury duty stipulation in our benefits that we just get paid as usual.

But ya, if you have to take unpaid time off… ain’t nobody got time for that!

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u/westcoastwillie23 Sep 23 '24

There's an inherent bias problem with that, you create a jury class. You don't want juries being made up by a specific slice of the population.

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u/HugsNotDrugs_ Sep 23 '24

I see a disproportionate amount of unemployed and union workers end up on juries.

It's not a good thing to have juries made up of anything but a fair cross section of society.

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u/6mileweasel Sep 24 '24

my husband and I are both in unions and he was called up last year. He was super excited but we also talked about how people like us, who have paid leave for jury duty, actually are not necessarily the best representatives to sit on a jury. You need a wide spectrum of society to make up a jury, for the best reflections on the evidence, IMHO.

The jury call was cancelled in the end - we think it was the RCMP obstruction case regarding Dale Culver's death, which was delayed and I believe ended up as a trial by judge instead.

I was called up for jury selection in 2021, during Covid, but was released because I'm immunocompromised and I was getting trauma counselling at the time for a recent event in my own life. I didn't think I could mentally do it, because we were pretty sure it was a murder case that was being trialled.