Jury Duty in King County, Washington

A few weeks ago I went to King County Superior Court to fulfill my jury duty.  There was a lot of information that wasn't communicated to me that I would have liked to know in advance of jury duty about how it works, so I'm writing it down here in the hope that it helps someone else.  Note that I never served on an actual trial, but I was selected to be in jury pools for 2 different trials.

"The length of one trial" - My summons for jury duty did not explicitly say that jury duty was at least 2 days.  It said "2 days or the length of a trial".  I had no idea how long trials lasted, but assumed they were usually pretty short and that 2 days was the maximum, but it's actually the minimum.  When we arrived at the courthouse, however, a judge told us that trials in her courtroom were usually at least a week and a half long. Apparently there's large variances in the length of a trial; a DUI case might last just one day, but some complex lawsuits can last 4 weeks or more.  Jurors are expected to schedule their jury duty for a time when they can be available for 2-4 weeks for a trial.  That is, when they don't have any vacations / trips scheduled, etc.  It would have been great to know how long trials can last, both in terms of scheduling and setting expectations for coworkers, etc.

The lower your number, the more likely you are to actually serve on a jury.   In one of the trials I was part of the jury pool for, 50 jury candidates were selected.  I was juror #31.  The judge wanted 13 jurors. 18 jurors in front of me (of jurors #1-30) would have needed to be dismissed for reasons of hardship, peremptory challenge, or other challenge in order for me to make it into "the box".  As it was, only 5 or so jurors were dismissed, and I got nowhere near the jury box.  Superior court cases require 12 jurors + 1 or more alternates.  District court cases require 6 jurors + 1 or more alternates.  When I showed up for jury duty, I was surprised to see how many people had been summoned: there were about 200 of us in the jury assembly room.

Juries don't meet on Fridays.  That's right -- if you're selected for a jury for a trial that lasts 2 weeks, you'll only need to be at court Monday - Thursday.  I don't know why the court works that way, but it does.

You will be paid $10 per day for your service, but don't expect to be paid that day.  They don't hand out ten-dollar bills that you'll be able to use to pay for lunch.  You'll be paid in the mail in a month or so.  If you aren't convinced to donate your compensation to the courthouse daycare facility (which I was).  Also, I find the $10/day payment comical.  If we paid jurors a reasonable amount for their time (minimum wage, at least), perhaps the legal system would use jurors' time more efficiently.

There is wifi at the courthouse.  There was some glitch with the portal setup, so the Chrome browser will refuse to connect to the portal (where you agree to terms of wifi use), but once you use Safari, Firefox, or some other browser to "sign in", you can use Chrome just fine.  You can use your laptop, smartphone, etc. in the jury assembly room, but not in the courtroom.  While waiting to be selected for a jury pool, there is plenty of free time.  I can't recall the speed of the connection, but I don't recall it being too bad.

You will have about 1.5 hours for lunch each day.  Lunch breaks are quite generous.  I found that this was plenty of time to walk to Pike Place Market and stroll around.

There is a jury orientation on your first day.  This involves watching a video and listening to a judge speak.  I found this pretty informative, since this was my first time going to jury duty.

You don't need to be at the courtroom at 8 a.m. every day, just the first day.  My second day I didn't need to be at the courtroom until 8:45 a.m.