Jury Duty

Fire_Fox

sammyjammy wrote: »

You're right, if you are retired or not claiming benefits and not working you don't get paid, you jsut get the lunch subsistence 9which given it has to cver tea and coffee throughoout the day is wholly inadequate, you're only allowed to leave the building at lunchtime). If you're claiming JSA you have to sign off and they pay you the equivalent of your benefit.

:eek: But if you sign off you go to the 'back of the queue' for certain benefits that only kick in after a few months such as help with your service charges (leasehold), possibly mortgage too.

Don't understand why people are so freaked about the food and drink aspect, just take your own. Nobody NEEDS to drink multiple cups of tea or coffee per day, carry of bottle of concentrated fruit squash if you don'rt want plain water. Many canteens will give you hot water for free so you could make your own tea coffee with a bit of planning.

missprice

sammyjammy wrote: »

At my court they had a canteen specifically for Jurors and you got a plastic card already loaded with the money on it. It sounds like quite alot but given its £2 for a cup of coffee, £4 for a sandwich and 75p for a packet of crisps it doesn't go far.

Be careful what you wish for, I always wanted to do Jury service and got my wish six months ago, case lasted 8 weeks and it was boring, traumatic and tiresome. I think everyone thats done it says never again and those who haven't really want to.

yeah it said on the .gov website that you get a card loaded with the money, still not enough for up to 10 hours, heck I would need to eat at least 3 times in that period to stop me fainting.
its more when you go to a court that has no facility for food that the problems start, and if you were on benefits too then I cant see how anyone on for e.g jobseekers ( I know they have to sign off and thats even worse) could afford it up front and claim it back after the trial. what if it was longer than a week? how do you pay the bills if all your money goes on food, or do you just take sarnies? is there even somewhere to keep sarnies?
and you probs right that if I ever did do Jury Service I would get a nasty vile horrible case and never want to do it again.
on the other hand a nice long 10 week fraud case about now would give me time to jobseek and I could go to a new prospective employer and tell them no chance of me being called for service as I had just done it.
see win win:T

sheilavw

My Husband was called for jury service a few years ago and one of the weeks was when we had a holiday booked. He explained and they said it was ok and they might call him at a later date but they never did.

Miss_Havisham

pimento wrote: »

It seems that just about everyone who is called for jury service doesn't want to do it whereas I would love to do it and have never been called.

me too, especially a trial at the Old Bailey.

spannerzone

I got called some years ago and found it interesting. I got called again more recently and shredded the letter just like the vast majority of people who receive them do. The result, nothing, the possible result? contempt of court / £1000 fine I believe.

The fact is they send out hundreds of jury duty summons and only a fraction reply, those that don't will almost certainly never hear another thing, well unless they start issuing the letters via recorded delivery. Stories of the police turning up to drag you in front of the judge are almost certainly never going to happen.

However I would urge people to do jury duty but don't live in fear if you just ignore the letter. Unless they can prove you received the letter then should anything ever come of it, just ask them when the letter was supposedly delivered as you've no record of receiving it.

Obviously you should never take advice from an Internet forum stranger!!!

RubyRue

property.advert wrote: »

Not when I was called some years ago. I went all around the houses before simply telling them that my business would not survive if I had to attend and when they asked how long this would last, I told them forever.

Really that's not very good, they must have changed it. I was called last year and two people sitting in the jury were self employed. They gave in their paperwork at the end without any trouble and were told they would receive it in a few weeks once it had been processed.

toffee'n'tom

suki1001 wrote: »

Pimento - After reading about a case which the judge said was so harrowing the jury were dismissed from doing any further jury duty ever again - that firmly put me off wanting to do jury service.

I work in the CJS and it's not a fun couple of weeks out. It's a massive massive responsibility even if it's the most trivial of offences because it can have the most devastating effect on not just the defendant but their family etc. And to be on a Jury in a case such as the above, believe me as I have prepared them, is the most upsetting and harrowing experience you will ever have. Hopefully you won't

Air_Cooled_75

To be fair I don't think you'd be there for 10 hours our court didn't even sit until 10.30 (we'd come in the Juror's assembly room for 10.15) then broke for lunch at 1, back at 2.15 then let out for the day around 4pm at the latest. Also, we were never in on a Friday. A couple of days (before being actually selected) we were sent home around 11am.

I was told that the selection letters used to be produced locally but now it is all centralised from London.

If you don't earn you don't get any money but all my child care costs have been met and money I've spent on travelling. They won't pay if you use car parks but will for park and ride. Where I sat we had a card for the canteen which had £5.71 put on it a day. If you sorted your own lunch out you got whatever you didn't spend on the card back (you can opt out of that though).

There isn't any guarantee you'll actually get to sit on a case, but at Sheffield they said the 'work rate' was over 80%.

There is a lot of hanging around and as someone has mentioned you can only leave the building at lunchtime and when you are discharged for the day. I found my iPad very useful on the first day (and I even managed to have a kip!) but once we all got chatting I didn't need it so much.

I really 'liked' it. I would deffo do it again, it was interesting to see how the system works, we as a whole jury even went back for sentencing so we saw the whole thing through (the judge sentenced the same day we delivered our verdict). However, we were all a bit stunned by the sentence...

19lottie82

skivenov wrote: »

As I understand it, the £62 isn't taxable, so it's about the same as paying income tax on a £90 shift. 5 of them a week isn't bad going really.

It is if you earn double that!
As I think someone has already said, it doesn't even cover the supposed uk "average wage"

jtr2803

19lottie82 wrote: »

It is if you earn double that!
As I think someone has already said, it doesn't even cover the supposed uk "average wage"

Exactly this. I would be at quite a significant loss if forced to do Jury service over my current wage, I work for a very large company and they don't pay people to be on Jury service and I know a number of other companies who don't pay. I don't buy the whole 'we all have to do our bit'.....sorry, I can tell some people do but this thread proves there are a lot of people who would love to partake, why can't they do it or why could it not be on a volunteer basis?