Lawsuits are expensive, but jury duty is cheap. In fact, a CNN comparison of the jury compensation in several states and minimum wages found that workers of fast food chain McDonald's are often paid better than those who sometimes decide on the life and death of people on trial.

But paying jurors for the time spent in the court room is just one part of the equation. The harder part is selecting an impartial jury.

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For instance, to select a jury for the trial of Boston 2013 Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, over 1,000 people were called. For the trial of James Holmes in Colorado for the death of 12 people killed in an Aurora movie theater shooting rampage in 2012, a whopping 9,000 potential jurors were called.

Once selected, then it's the turn of the jurors to suffer financial hardship due to the low pay of jury work. The jurors for Tsarnaev's trial would be paid US$40 per day for seven hours of work.

If the juror was employed in the state and paid minimum wage, he would have earned US$63 for a day's work, although jurors are reimbursed 50 cents per mile of travel expenses.

Compared to the average wage in Massachusetts, which is at US$21 an hour, the income loss of a Boston juror is US$128 daily, estimates MassLive.com.

Jurors in Holmes's trial in Colorado would be paid by their employer at least US$50 daily for a maximum of three days jury service. Beyond three days, the state pays jurors US$50 daily. If the trial lasts the whole year, the juror would earn US$11,700, US$30 higher than the national poverty line for a single person.

Jurors in other states are paid lower, such as US$4 per day in Illinois and US$6 a day in Missouri.

An employer can't fire a worker for jury duty, but it is not mandated to pay the employee a salary while on jury service, although data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that 62 percent of U.S. employers gave those employees paid jury leave. However, most of them were employees of big companies.

To address the problem of getting jurors, especially for cases with long trials, some states have established a lengthy trial fund where jurors are paid higher rates, such as US$200 a day on the 11^th day onwards in Oklahoma and US$300 per day on the sixth day in Arizona.

The situation has some legal observers push for a more equitable compensation scheme, especially for jurors in high-profile cases like the Boston Marathon bombing.

TagsBoston bombing, jury selection