{"id":382834,"date":"2026-07-22T20:18:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-22T20:18:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/382834\/"},"modified":"2026-07-22T20:18:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-22T20:18:18","slug":"texas-jurors-get-nearly-27k-payout-each-for-5-days-work-after-high-profile-case-was-delayed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/382834\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas jurors get nearly $27K payout each for 5 days work after high-profile case was delayed"},"content":{"rendered":"

The wheels of justice turn slowly\u2014 but grind lucratively!\u00a0<\/p>\n

Texas jurors will get huge payouts of $27,000 each for only five days of work in court, a judge has ruled \u2014 after a bungled case against the county sheriff was delayed for nearly two years.<\/p>\n

Twelve jurors and two alternates were ordered to receive a total of $375,000 in taxpayer dough after a case accusing former Williamson County Sheriff Robert Chody<\/a> of hiding evidence of a black man who died in custody was dropped,\u00a0KXAN<\/a> reported Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\"SageJudge Karen Sage ordered each juror to be payed roughly $27,000. Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images<\/p>\n

The jurors get $20 for their first \u201cday of service\u201d and\u00a0 $58 \u201cfor each day thereafter,\u201d even while not there \u2014 because the\u00a0court instructed them to \u201cmaintain impartiality\u201d for 457 days as the trial was halted,\u00a0Judge Karen Sage ordered July 13, according to the station.<\/p>\n

Though the jurors weren\u2019t in court, they were asked to behave as if they were on an overnight recess and avoid talking and reading about the case for the 457 days.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is one of the worst malicious prosecution cases that we\u2019ve come across,\u201d said defense attorney Ryan Johnson told FOX 7.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey basically failed what a first-year law student would understand how to do. And so that\u2019s embarrassing,\u201d Johnson\u00a0said of the Travis County District Attorney\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey tried to blame the county attorney, and they tried to blame the sheriff for doing their job, and ultimately it didn\u2019t hold up, and their case fell apart as it should,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

During the brief 2024 trial,\u00a0Chody and county attorney Jason Nassour were accused of destroying or concealing recordings of the 2019 death of Javier Ambler<\/a>, who suffered from heart failure after being tased in custody, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n

\"Chodyformer Williamson County Sheriff Robert Chody was accused of tampering with evidence. FOX 7 Austin<\/p>\n

Ambler\u2019s arrest and death were recorded during a taping of the reality show \u201cLive PD,\u201d\u00a0 and the sheriff\u2019s office argued they had an agreement with the show\u2019s parent company to delete the footage after 30 days, FOX 7 reported.<\/p>\n

Footage showed him being repeatedly tased as he begged, \u201cI can\u2019t breathe\u201d \u2014 echoing the tragic statement uttered by Eric Garner <\/a>in 2014 \u2014 and also \u201cSave me!\u201d <\/p>\n

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Prosecutors had argued that Nassour and Chody should have seized the footage of Ambler\u2019s death before it was deleted but the defense insisted that doing so would have violated federal law.<\/p>\n

The botched trial started on Aug. 15, 2024, and lasted just three days after the prosecutors moved to temporarily put the legal proceedings on hold, KXAN reported.<\/p>\n

Sage did not grant the motion, which led attorneys to appeal her decision, pausing proceedings until the appellate court could issue a decision.<\/p>\n

The case was finally dropped by the Travis County District Attorney\u2019s Office on July 1 \u2014 after nearly two years,\u00a0 according to the report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The wheels of justice turn slowly\u2014 but grind lucratively!\u00a0 Texas jurors will get huge payouts of $27,000 each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":382835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2441,7318,27,29,28,734],"class_list":["post-382834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-court","tag-jury-duty","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/382835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}