Page 14 - Pierce County Lawyer Novemer December 2024

Pierce County Launches Juror Pay Pilot,
New Daily Rate Will be $100 Through May
As part of a pilot program set to begin October 14 and run through May 2025, jurors who appear for
jury duty at the County-City building (which includes Pierce County District Court, Superior Court and
Tacoma Municipal Court) will receive $100 per day plus mileage reimbursement. This pay increase
replaces the $10 typically paid to jurors in Pierce County and throughout the majority of Washington.
The pilot program will measure whether higher juror pay reduces barriers to jury participation and in
turn, improves jury diversity.
Administrative Office of the Courts staff have partnered
with Pierce County to distribute surveys to participating
jurors to measure the impact and sentiment of increased
pay. The surveys will also measure demographic changes
over the course of the pilot. Once the pilot concludes, work
will immediately begin to compile the findings into a report,
which will be presented to the Legislature along with potential
recommendations for a more permanent adjustment to juror
pay. The Supreme Court Minority and Justice Commission
expects to present the report to the 2026 Legislature.
The Legislature appropriated nearly $1.6 million to Pierce
County for the seven-month pay pilot, paying for $90 of the
$100 daily rate for jurors, while the county continues to pay for
the remaining $10.
While the Legislature may opt for more pay pilots if Pierce
County’s results alone aren’t enough to convince the body
to revise the juror pay statue, this level of support from the
Legislature is a step towards increasing a pay rate that hasn’t
gone up since 1959.
“The fact that the Legislature has looked at this issue and that
they’ve put $1.6 million into seeing if reducing this barrier, in
particular, of straight income, has the ability to increase the
diversity of our juries, that’s huge,” said Chris Gaddis, Pierce
County Superior Court Administrator. “It’s a big win for the
court system and it’s a big win for the public.”
A statewide juror demographic survey, conducted by Seattle
University in partnership with the Minority and Justice
Commission, found that combined household income
was a significant indicator of a potential juror’s ability to
participate in jury service. Additionally, white respondents
represented the minority in the lowest income category and
the majority in the highest income category for both men and
women. Among those responding to jury summons, Black,
American Indian and Alaskan Native survey respondents were
generally underrepresented. Additionally, a majority of all
survey respondents (64%) indicated experiencing a conflict
or hardship that presented a barrier to participating in jury
service.
Among other recommendations, the survey also advised the
Legislature to continue to implement pilot increases in juror
pay and monitor changes in demographics.
Laurie Louise Sale, a court program analyst for the AOC’s
Office of Judicial and Legislative Relations, is working with
Pierce County to administer the pay pilot. She explained
how a successful pilot program would not only improve jury
diversity but also jury participation as a whole.“I think overall
a successful pilot program would be an increased jury pool,”
Sale said. “People actually saying yes to the summons because
they’re going to have more money in their pocket at the end
of the day, and feel that they can take a step away from their
daily job position and commit to jury duty without doing real
damage to their daily budget, weekly budget, what have you.”
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