Once jurors show up at the Shawano County Courthouse to perform their civic duty, they get paid regardless of whether the trial goes forward or is settled 30 minutes before it is set to begin.
Now, Shawano County officials are asking judges to exercise their right and assign those jury costs to the party at fault — often as much as $1,000 a day.
Ethan Schmidt, clerk of courts, said there were three cases in August that were settled at the last minute.
“We didn’t have any jury trials held, but we had three days where we had jury trials set,” he said to the Shawano County Public Safety Committee last month. “We called jurors in. There was some argument by both sides about who should be assessed costs.”
The judge has yet to decide who will pay those costs.
“Generally, what happens is that, if we call in a jury and it (the case) settles the morning of, by state statute, the judges can order costs to the party that was at fault,” Schmidt said. “That’s one area with budgets being cut that I really pushed for and advocated for the judges to start doing, and just being cognizant of it.”
Schmidt said it doesn’t happen very often, but by a strange coincidence, it occurred three times in August.
“It’s about $1,000 a day depending on where we have our jurors coming from,” Schmidt said.
He said the costs can be assigned to the defendant or the district attorney’s office, whichever side the judge rules is at fault.
Schmidt was first appointed clerk of courts in 2020 and was elected in 2021. Previously, he was a team leader with Shawano County Sheriff’s Department’s dispatch center and a volunteer firefighter.
“When I first came over, it seemed to happen quite a bit,” he said. “We were sending jurors home for trials settled the morning of, and it was kind of an accepted cost.”
He noted that some counties have a rule that cases settled within 48 hours of their scheduled start time have jury costs assigned to the party at fault.
Schmidt said he was OK with the assigning the costs for cases settled the morning of the trial, as there are no jury costs expended until that day.
Supervisor Jeremy Gretzinger asked what kind of enforcement the county has if the party at fault refuses to pay those assigned costs.
“We send it down to TRIP (Tax Refund Intercept Program) or the State Debt Collection (SDC) agency,” Schmidt said. “They’re able to garnish bank accounts, intercept tax refunds. We can get the money.”
The SDC been used more frequently in the past four years than in years prior to that. It can find money sources the county cannot.
“One of the common situations that we run into quite a bit is Grandma puts a savings account into a defendant’s name for when she passes away to give it to him,” Schmidt said. “Because he’s listed on that account with her, the state debt is actually able to go in and garnish that account from Grandma or Grandpa or another person.”
Property liens can also be used to collect debt, he said.
The agency charges a percentage amount on top of the debt, so both county and state get full payment. Other collection agencies take a percentage of what is recouped, and the county gets less.
Two cases in August were slightly less than $1,000 as those jury pools were mostly from the Shawano area. The other time is was closer to $1,400 as most of the jurors were from the eastern and western ends of the county.
Jurors are paid $12.50 for a half-day of service or $25 for a full day, as well as mileage.
At the final pretrial hearing, judges tell all parties that fees can be assessed if the case is settled late into the process.
kpasson@newmedia-wi.com
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