Jury Duty

Well, I got picked for jury duty. Booo!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now for 4 months straight I am being held hostage by the county circuit court. I have to be available just in case I am selected to be part of the jury selection process each week. Basically, every Monday I have to call a phone number and listen to a recording to see if my name is there. If it is, I have to report to the courthouse the next day with about 30 other people and of this group, the court will choose the 12 jurors and 1 or 2 alternates.

It's ridiculous to be tied up this way for 4 months. Even the defendents get bail but not us jurors. Luckily today all the trials they had scheduled for the week were settled with plea agreements today and I only had to sit in the jury room for 3 hours doing nothing but missing work. They started out with 26 indictments for this court term and so far that I know of, 6 have been settled. There may be more that I don't know of. One that was settled was a murder case which might have taken a couple of weeks so I'm glad that one isn't on the docket. Maybe I won't have to do much this time.

I think they have at least 101 people in the jury pool and probably more. The sign in sheet that I had to sign my name to this morning had numbers beside our names and the numbers were not in order. The highest on the list was 101 so I'm thinking that at least 101 people have been pooled for jury duty.

The court will pay $40.00 a day to each juror who has to be called to the courthouse and they dont' take taxes out. Some people in the jury room were under the impression that this means they don't have to report the jury pay to the IRS. I don't think it's the case that if no taxes are taken out then you don't have to pay taxes on the money. I have to pay taxes on my interest income from my bank accounts. If any IRS folks are reading this, email me and let me know about reporting jury pay. You'd think I would know this as I have an accounting degree, but tax regs are a whole different animal. You could have a 4 year degree just on the US tax code.