How do you compensate them? Based on the compensation of the attorneys, maybe, but which side - the low-paid public prosecutor or the high-powered defence attorney? If you raise compensation to a high level, then jury duty becomes attractive as a source of income for unemployed people, or as a target of scams and cons. If you simply restrict compensation to paying the jurors what they would have been paid in their usual jobs you have the problem of the temporarily unemployed but normally highly paid person. It's difficult, and the government has to strike a balance somewhere.
"then jury duty becomes attractive as a source of income for unemployed people, or as a target of scams and cons."
How? Locally the system is a random lottery based on a pool of drivers license registrations. A standard mantra against voter-ID laws is that pool of poor people is highly challenged to obtain ID (which in reality is false, its just a mantra), so if anything there should be a statistical lack of unemployed people not a surplus. WRT scams and cons I guess you'd have fewer people lying about being members of the fully informed jury association or otherwise trying to avoid service, and that aversion to lie should make the system inherently fairer, so again no problem?
Yes the government needs to strike a balance somewhere, but paying effectively zero is not anywhere near the right balance. Personally I would pay the jury the same as what the public defender is earning as this would make it clear to everyone how little they earn.
