Jury Duty
Jury duty is a valuable service to your community. It is an important responsibility since a juror will determine a defendant’s guilt or innocence.
Selection & Service
Jurors are randomly selected by a computer program from a computer disc provided to the court from Motor Vehicle and Voter Registration records. Jurors in Municipal Court are required to serve at least once every calendar year. In North Myrtle Beach Municipal Court, a system has been devised to simplify jury duty.
Monday Morning Choosing
All jurors are required to appear on Monday morning at 9 am. At this time, all juries are selected for all cases set for trial for the whole week. When a juror leaves the courtroom after jury selection, they will know when and if they are required to return for a trial during that week.
Each juror that has been chosen for a specific trial is provided with the name of the defendant along with the Court’s telephone number. They may call this number any time before their scheduled trial and a recording will update them on the status of this case (i.e.: the time has been changed, the defendant has pled, or that the time is still the same).
Term of Court & Compensation
The term of court is for one week only. Any cases that are not disposed of within this one-week term will be continued to the next term of court and will receive a new set of jurors. Jurors are not required to reappear at the next term of Court.
The average length of time for a trial is approximately three hours. Any case started will conclude that same day and will not be carried over to the next day. Jurors are compensated $15 per day served but not for mileage.