Maybe I do not have enough perspective since I just did my jury service this week [probably more on that later], but the announcement in this morning’s paper that we are going to slash juror pay in Minnesota in half starting in August really riles me.
Jury duty is a form of conscription. Like the draft, it is not administered fairly. And like military pay during the days of the draft, the compensation sucks.
This slashing of pay just makes things worse.
We all want to keep our society functioning democratically and fairly. Yet we seem to treat with contempt some of those folks who are especially necessary to keep things going.
We operate our society with minimum wage election judges and poor per diem jurors and while we may have a professional military now, we still treat our veterans like charity cases [which we indeed make many of them become].
Let’s keep that in mind when we vote in September or October or the next time we read of what we think is an errant jury.
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