ORDER REQUESTING A SEPARATE AND/OR JOINT RESPONSE TO THE HARDSHIP REQUEST CONCERNING JUROR NO. 12

GARLAND E. BURRELL, Jr., Senior District Judge.

Today, the attached email dated May 6, 2017 was received, from which the undersigned judge has redacted the following information: the sender's name, telephone number and email address, and Juror No. 12's name. The email is from the spouse of Juror No. 12 and contains the request that Juror No. 12 be excused from further jury service because of financial hardship that jury service has and will continue causing Juror No. 12 and his family to experience.

Each party is requested to file a separate and/or joint response to the hardship request as soon as practicable. The parties should confer about this matter for the purpose of determining whether a joint filing is feasible.

Greetings Maria Luna,

My name is Sender's Name, and I am the wife of Juror No. 12, who was recently chosen to serve on a jury last week.

I am writing this email to ask if at all possible he could be released from his jury duty. I doubt it can happen as the trial has already been going on for a few days, but when he was chosen last week, we were under the impression his work would still pay him (at least partially) for fulfilling his civic duty. Unfortunately while he was trying to take care of some loose ends at work last week, he found out he would not be getting paid and that he will only get paid his hours worked when not on Jury Duty.

This came as a shock to us, as in my line of work (as a teacher) I am salary and know they would still pay me when I serve my civil duty, so I find this insulting his line of work will not take care of him while he completes his civic duty.

Because he is not able to work three of his five days a week at his hourly rate ($43.56-$58.96 an hour depending on location) and only collecting $40 a day for his Jury duty, the pay deduction of hundreds of dollars a day (over $1000 each week) puts an extreme hardship on us and our children (14 months and 3.5 years), as his income pays for our mortgage ($2930/mo) and my income barley covers our children's daycare ($1840/mo) and car payments ($515 & $240 a month). Not to mention our insurance, credit bills, utilities, gas, that also adds up to our monthly totals (over $1600.00). And we still have to feed our family.

I now my husband will not mention hardship to the court as he is too proud of his duty, yet embarrassed that his work doesn't respect his duty to serve as a Juror and too embarrassed to admit the financial hardship that will cause his family.

Had this only been a few days for the trial, it would have not been a problem as we have some savings, but the case he is serving is going to take weeks and that will cause us to default making payments on our mortgage and ruin our credit and put as stake of loosing our home.

I hope you can take in consideration of this hardship on Juror No. 12 and his family and be able to excuse him from the case. I would be more than willing to take his place or serve in a future trial to make up for it as it would not cause a financial hardship like it is with him missing his line of work.

If anything can be done this late in the case, I would greatly appreciate it. Please feel free to contact me if there are any further questions or concerns as I would be more than happy to address them.

Thank you foru time and consideration with our circumstances.