The majority of people called up for jury service in New Zealand get out of doing their duty.
Last year, about 61% of the 360,564 people called to serve on a jury were excused from participating.
An Official Information Act request for Ministry of Justice data on juries released to the Otago Daily Times shows this was a slightly lower proportion than for 2007, when 63.7%, or 222,516 of the 348,893 people called were excused.
In each of the two years, more than 2500 people tried to get out of serving, but had their excuses declined.
The highest number of excuses accepted related to employment - more than 86,500 in each of the past two calendar years.
A further 16,000 self-employed people in each of the years were also excused.
After employment, the most common excuse was family commitments (more than 26,000 each year) and then those aged more than 65 (almost 21,000 in 2007 and 18,000 last year).
Sixteen acceptable excuses were listed, including health, holidays, language, religious belief and disability.
General manager of district courts Tony Fisher, in a letter releasing the information, indicated the recently introduced provision in the Juries Act which allows jurors to apply to put off their jury service for a year should help juror attendance.
The ministry could not provide information on the occupation of jurors.
Mr Fisher said the information was collected but it was not available in a meaningful or useful format and was purely used by prosecuting and defence counsel.
A breakdown of the ages of jurors shows five times more people under 20 served on juries last year compared with 2007, the figure rising from 255 to 1374.
This age group still had the smallest number of serving jurors.
The variance between 2007 and 2008 for the other age groups listed was much smaller, proportionately.
Although people aged over 65 may be excused from jury service, more than 2000 people over the age of 70 served in each of the past two years, and about 9500 aged 61 to 70.
When the total numbers serving each year, about 55,000, is broken down by ages, the two decades between 40 and 60 years have the highest totals: about 13,000 each.
The ministry spent more than $7.8 million last year on jury expenses, down from about $8 million in 2007.
The bulk of the money, about $6.5 million in each year, was for jurors fees.
Jurors receive $31 for every half day at court if they attend for three hours.
Mr Fisher said this rate increased for long trials and if jurors had to stay later than 6pm.
The top rate is $163 a day, which would involve attendance after 9pm in a trial which lasted more than five days.
While some recent high-profile High Court trials have been lengthy, lasting weeks or months, this is not the usual pattern.
Figures from the years 2004 to 2008 show the average High Court trial length was less than a week, with district court average trial lengths between two and a-half and three days.
This pattern generally applies to trials held in Dunedin, although the only High Court jury trial in Dunedin last year - that of Michael Swann, who was found guilty of defrauding the Otago Hospital Board of $16.9 million - was longer, lasting 14 days.
Expenses for public transport and private car travel to and from courts came to about $1 million, reimbursement of parking costs $194,000, child care $63,000 and taxi fares $4000. (Taxi fares can only be claimed if the court registrar is satisfied there was no reasonably convenient other public or private transport available and that avoiding parking costs was more convenient than the use of a private vehicle.)
This information could not be broken down into regional totals.
Details were also not available on the number of applications received for extra payment under the exceptional circumstances provision of the jury rules, how much money was given for such payments and under what circumstances.
Mr Fisher said the ministry did not maintain records for the number of applications received for such additional payments.
