MINNEAPOLIS -- Todd Gilly insists he's no troublemaker.

But the plumber from Mora, Minn., found himself in big trouble recently when his answers during jury selection landed him in the Kanabec County jail.

"I could see myself getting awfully frustrated having to take more time off than ... a day," Gilly said while being interviewed for jury duty, according to court records. "I don't get paid when I'm not working. I could see myself just going with the flow to get it over with to get back to work."

His responses didn't sit well with Kanabec County Chief Judge Timothy Bloomquist, who found Gilly in contempt of court and sentenced him to a day in jail.

A bewildered Gilly was taken away immediately, locked up with the other inmates, and given the standard prison uniform: orange shirt, brown pants and sandals.

While his case may be unusual, his concerns are not: Minnesota officials say more people are seeking exemptions from jury duty because they can't afford it.

In Hennepin County, the number of jurors excused for "severe financial hardship" in the Fourth Judicial District has risen 25 percent in the past year, said spokeswoman Nancy Peters. Dakota County court officials say they're fielding more requests for exemptions based on financial concerns.

Rich Sletten, clerk of court for the U.S. District Court in Minnesota, said his staff is beginning to hear from more people who say they can't serve on a jury right now because they've lost their job or they own a small business.

Angela Marckel recently sat on a Ramsey County jury, missing four days of work. "If I had to be gone for more than a week, financially it would have just killed me," said Marckel, a contract IT worker. "I'm barely making it right now."

When the judge asked her pool whether anyone had a concern about serving on the trial, Marckel raised her hand and explained her situation. Then others chimed in about their own financial concerns, she said.

Holding people in contempt for avoiding jury duty is not unprecedented.

Still, Donald Lewis, dean of the Hamline University School of Law and a former federal prosecutor, said what happened in Kanabec County was "a rare event."

A judge is captain of the courtroom, Lewis said, and has the authority to send someone to jail for up to 30 days for being in contempt. That said, he added that absent any display of disrespect, if a juror is simply telling the truth, then it may not rise to the level of contempt.

"I don't think it's proper to put a juror in jail unless the juror is in essence mocking the authority of the court," he said.

People do have legitimate reasons to be excused from jury duty, Lewis said, but it's up to the judge to discern when there is truly a hardship as opposed to an inconvenience. "Jury service is a hardship for everyone," Lewis said. "If a judge readily accepted as an excuse of service the fact that someone was losing income ... you'd have juries solely made up of retirees or the unemployed."