Will a tenfold increase in jury pay mean better justice? Pierce County is going to see

If you’re called into jury duty in Pierce County, you receive $10 per day served. That rate hasn’t changed since 1959 (a time when the average cost of a new house was $12,400 and a gallon of gas was 25 cents).

Until now.

This fall some Pierce County jurors will receive $100 per day as part of a pilot program designed to test whether increased compensation would allow more people to serve on juries and make jury pools more diverse.

The program tentatively is set to launch Oct. 1 and run through May 31, 2025, Frank Thomas told The News Tribune. Thomas is the senior court program analyst for the Washington State Supreme Court’s Minority and Justice Commission, which has a mission to investigate and eradicate racial, ethnic and cultural bias in the Washington state court system, he said.

All Pierce County jurors summoned for a jury date at the County-City Building (including Superior Court, District Court and Tacoma Municipal Court) within that time frame will receive $100 per day served, as well as mileage reimbursement, Thomas said.

Researchers will be compiling data to measure how representative juries are and if increased compensation enabled more people to participate in the process, he said. At the end of the pilot, researchers will write a report and present their findings and recommendations to the state Legislature for its consideration in potential revisions to the jury pay statute, Thomas said.

When analyzing what barriers prevent people from serving on juries, Thomas said, one of the most commonly reported barriers was economic. Under state law, jurisdictions can pay jurors between $10-$25 a day, in addition to mileage.

“The cost of taking time away from work, or otherwise the expenses incurred in participating on a jury, the practicality of driving to the courthouse, paying for parking, getting lunch, all of those things oftentimes adds up considerably more than $10 a day itself,” he said. “In addition to jurists really not being adequately compensated for the time they have to take away from their gainful employment, they’re also oftentimes incurring more expenses to participate as a juror than what has been presently compensated.”

Chris Gaddis, the Pierce County Superior Court administrator, said he thinks jury compensation needs to be a statewide conversation.

In a typical year all Pierce Court courts will have about 35,000 juror days and use about 15,000 jurors, Gaddis said. To pay jurors $100 a day would cost the county more than $3 million a year in addition to current juror expenses, he said.

This pilot program is supported with $1.5 million from the state Legislature, Gaddis said. Pierce County will continue paying jurors $10 per day throughout the pilot, with the other $90 a day coming from the state, he said.

“We want to break down barriers to service so that everyone’s voice is heard in the jury room,” Gaddis said. “We’re just excited to be able to, at least for a short period of time, fully compensate our jurors for the work they do.”

BIPOC, low-income people underrepresented on juries

Upon analyzing the demographic information of Washington jurors over a 17-month time period in 2022 and 2023, Seattle University researchers found that people of color and those of low socioeconomic status remain generally underrepresented when responding to jury summons.

Black, American Indian and Alaskan Native survey respondents were generally underrepresented, and on average the jurors who reported for service had annual household incomes above the median income in their respective counties.

Household income was found to be a “significant indicator” of a potential juror’s ability to participate. Work-related conflicts, dependent care and personal health were the leading barriers cited by potential jurors, according to the final report.

In Pierce County, 71.4% of all respondents reported experiencing at least one conflict or hardship that was a barrier to their participation in jury service. Women across all racial groups reported significantly higher levels of dependent-care conflicts and hardships, the report said.

Improving jury representation is important for a number of reasons, Thomas said.

It’s important that the public see and trust the judicial system “as a foundational underpinning of our democratic system,” he said.

“First and foremost, it’s important as a means of equitable and democratic civic participation,” Thomas said. “And secondly, … a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds has been proven to improve the efficacy of juries as trier of fact in almost every instance that has been measured in the nation over the last many years.”

Juries that are more diverse in almost every metric of demographic identity “deliberate over fact for longer, they have a more accurate collective understanding of the facts and how to apply them to the relevant law and issue, and ultimately, diverse juries are found to be more accurate in terms of fewer wrongful convictions and overturned decisions than more homogeneous juries,” Thomas said.

“The Minority and Justice Commission are true believers in the promise of the rule of law and the democratic control over the legal process that a jury of your peers, as a constitutional right, really presents,” he said. “We are very proud and also humbled for this opportunity to try to expand access to one of the most critical exercises of civic power and democratic duty that we have in America.”