Al Seib-Pool/Getty ImagesHow much money do the Conrad Murray jurors stand to make from the Michael Jackson death trial?
—Tara, via the inbox
Well, it's been a day since the verdict was announced and this I can say for certain: None of them has earned a dime. But that may soon change. In fact, if you're out of work and struggling to make ends meet, you may not want to read exactly how much cash this trial could yield ...
OK. So you followed me here, which means you want to know. The answer? Each of the 12 jurors who convicted Conrad Murray yesterday stands to make enough to put a down payment on a brand-new house. Really. Just from selling their stories to the highest media bidder.
Pay-for-play interviews aren't so common Stateside as you might think, given that tabloids here do it all the time. But paid interviews are quite common in, say, Asia, where Jackson was even more popular than he was in the West.
That's where the jurors can expect to rake in the most cash from interviews or other access.
"A juror may be able to make 25,000 or 30,000 from this story," says Gene Grabowski of the crisis PR company Levick Strategic Communications. "Maybe a little bit more."
And that's despite the fact that the judge in the Murray case has ordered the jurors not to sell their stories for the next three months.
"The domestic market, given what we think we know about this case, might cool off by then, but the foreign market would remain strong," Grabowski tells me.
This wouldn't be the first time that a high-profile juror has fielded an offer for that kind of cash. Through a publicist, at least one juror in the Casey Anthony trial claimed to have gotten an offer for upward of $50,000 for an interview. According to reports, he eventually turned it down.
Of course, jurors could come forward any day now to speak out. If they do it soon, it definitely means one thing: They ain't in it for the money.