I had jury duty not too long ago. I didn’t get picked for the jury but I did make a whole lot of financial observations that got me thinking about who the real victim was in the court case.
The Criminal
The criminal was a young man accused of committing a theft.
The Crime
The alleged theft, as far as I know, was a mobile phone. Yes, you read that right, a mobile phone that was at best, worth $1500 if it was a high end iPhone. Here’s the kicker, the phone was returned to the owner by the accused but for some reason the State decided to pursue criminal conviction.
The Jury
As I stated, I didn’t get picked as a juror but I did participate in the juror pool selection. There were 60 people called to a jury pool and the State and Defense had an opportunity to question the jurors and strike the jurors they didn’t like out. This process started at around 10 am and didn’t end until 4 p.m. for a total of about 6 hours minus a few 5 minute breaks so we’ll round down to 5 hours (this will be important later).
The Court
As I sat in the court watching the prosecutor and defense attorneys endlessly meet with the judge over language used to question the potential jurors I started counting.
I counted two court bailiffs. According to PayScale, a court bailiff makes about $20/hour but I think it’s far higher than that when you account for the generous state pension but we’ll go with that number for now.
I counted one judge. The average salary for a judge in my area is about $150,000 per year or $75/hour.
I counted two state prosecutors and pegged their salaries at $80,000/year each or $160,000/year or $80/hour.
I counted one court stenographer which seems to pay about $63,000/year or $31.50/hour.
I counted one administrative assistant which we’ll assume $20/hour.
I am only including labor in my observation here but I also observed multiple wide screen displays, teleconferencing technology, computer systems, and the court building itself but we’ll neglect those costs and consider them “sunk” costs. There were also other people in the courtroom but I had no idea what their job or purpose was as they never spoke but worked behind the counters.
Jester Justice
I titled this post with Jester Justice because the whole thing felt like one sick joke. There were 60 jurors being question for 5 hours. The median salary in the state this took place is about $60,000 or about $30/hour.
Let’s do some math:
60 jurors x $30/hr = $1800. Before I go any further, it would have been cheaper to pay off the victim $1800 in cash than start this trial because at $1800 for ONE hour, we’ve already exceeded the cost of any mobile phone that was stolen. At one point, I felt like getting up and offering to pay the victim $2000 so we could all just go home.
But let’s keep going on the math:
Productivity Cost
- 60 jurors x $30/hr x 5 hrs = $9,000
Taxpayer Cost
- 2 bailiffs x $20/hr x 5 hrs = $200
- 1 judge x $75/hr x 5 hrs = $375
- 2 state prosecutors x $80/hr x 5 hrs = $800
- 1 court stenographer x $31.50/hr x 5 hrs = $157.50
- 1 administrative assistant x $20/hr x 5 hours = $1000
- Total = $2532.50
The total cost in terms of productivity and taxpayer cost is $11,535 and we’re just selecting the jury! The judge said the trial might list 3 to 5 days to I guess that’s somewhere in the $30,000 to $50,000 range for one damn stolen phone!
Final Sick Twist
The last observation I will state here is that the jury pool started with a very diverse group of people. I heard people speaking with various accents including Spanish, Chinese, and Middle East but when the final juror pool was selected it was virtually all white men and women. The defendant was a young black man so it felt like Jester Justice with the greater fool being the taxpayer.