Oprah Winfrey a juror in Chicago murder trial
Monday, August 16, 2004 Posted: 9:00 PM EDT (0100 GMT)




CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) -- U.S. television talk show host Oprah Winfrey was picked to serve on a jury in a murder trial Monday, court officials said.

"It's not every day that you have a celebrity on a jury," a spokesman for the Cook County prosecutor's office in Chicago said.

For daily pay of $17.20, the billionaire Chicago resident will travel from her tony North Side apartment to the grubby courthouse on the city's South Side.

Winfrey will help decide whether Dion Coleman is guilty of shooting to death Walter Holley after a dispute over a counterfeit $50 bill Holley had accused Coleman of passing.

"I'm just hoping it doesn't take longer than a week because I've got shows to do," Winfrey told ABC-TV before she was chosen.

It is not the first time Winfrey has appeared in court.

A Texas jury in 1998 sided with Winfrey in a suit brought against her by cattlemen who contended she damaged their business with on-air comments about disease and eating meat.

Since its U.S. national premiere in 1986, "The Oprah Winfrey Show" has won 38 Emmy awards, been distributed to 107 countries and been a top-rated talk show in the United States for the past 18 years.

Man she got shafted! I was on the jury here and got 20 whole bux a day! Not that she would miss the 2 dollars and some change or anything.

Well you're both getting more then you do for the one court I was called for in Oregon! You get paid $10 for the first 2 days and then it goes up to something else after that. Plus $0.20 a mile for gas round trip. I didn't have to sit on the jury though. They had 3 groups that day. One actually had a case, the other's defendant changed his plea, and mine decided he didn't want a jury after all! I don't know how it works in other states but here you're given a date and if you go in on that date and aren't needed then you're excused for 2 years. I think someone needed to tell their computer that though because I got a summons for 1 month after I served! Must not update their computer too often!