This is why we need the death penalty...

[Svartalf]

No, there aren't. Justice is best served when it is dispensed by those who are most affected by the wrongs committed, which is the body of the people.

Actually, justice is best served when it is based on the truth. An idiot jury that has no idea of what constitutes good or bad evidence is an affront to justice. What is needed, as in every other walk of life, is expertise.

But the jury system is based on the principle that the juros must be peers of the accused, and in most cases, that means idiots... if judgment is to be left to expert, then a single justice, or at most a three judge panel is what you want, not a jury of "experts".

Professional jurors have an appeal, but they are not what is needed... they are one of the worst perversions of the jury system one can imagine, and if you want that, you really want to scrap the jury system, which is too costly and cumbersome in the first place... and I say that in the full knowledge that if they switched to professional jurors, I'd be the first to apply for such a job, given that I am a man of discernment with a keen interest in justice.

[Seth]

No, there aren't. Justice is best served when it is dispensed by those who are most affected by the wrongs committed, which is the body of the people.

Actually, justice is best served when it is based on the truth. An idiot jury that has no idea of what constitutes good or bad evidence is an affront to justice. What is needed, as in every other walk of life, is expertise.

But the jury system is based on the principle that the juros must be peers of the accused, and in most cases, that means idiots... if judgment is to be left to expert, then a single justice, or at most a three judge panel is what you want, not a jury of "experts".

Professional jurors have an appeal, but they are not what is needed... they are one of the worst perversions of the jury system one can imagine, and if you want that, you really want to scrap the jury system, which is too costly and cumbersome in the first place... and I say that in the full knowledge that if they switched to professional jurors, I'd be the first to apply for such a job, given that I am a man of discernment with a keen interest in justice.

How do we know you're not a devious psychopath who wants the power to manipulate the lives of others?

[Seth]

We win when we post a single sentence and Seth responds with an essay. Long may it continue.

Everybody wins, and I agree.

[Seth]

I partly agree with Seth, in that I'm reluctant to hand control in judicial systems from representatives of the people to some elite panel of experts. I concede that this can have disadvantages, in terms of people with a limited ability to understand complex cases. Perhaps there should be a neutral "judge's representative, at least in complex cases, who can sit with the jurors and give some objective guidance when asked, without taking part in the final decision.

How can you guarantee objectivity? The whole point of the trial is for the prosecution to attempt to lay out a case that proves guilt beyond all reasonable doubt and for the defense to lay out a case of reasonable doubt. The adversary system works very well in most cases precisely because each side only has to be concerned with it's own mandate. The jury IS the "judge's representative." The judge is there to make sure that the process is fair, not to try to persuade a jury one way or another, and one of his (or her) powers is to take questions from the jury with respect to the evidence presented and advise them of what the law requires. If the prosecution cannot present even a complex case in a way that an average person can understand then he has failed in his duty and the defendant is freed. Prosecutors have hundreds of experts and professionals to call upon to testify and explain complex evidence to the jury and hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to spend to make their case comprehensible. If the prosecutor cannot do so with all those resources at his command, then there is axiomatically a reasonable doubt about the guilt of the defendant and he must go free.

Defendants, on the other hand, often have no money at all and must depend on a public defender to protect their rights and rebut the prosecution's overwhelming advantage. Public defender offices are notoriously inept and underfunded, so the defendant does not have recourse to the kinds of massive resources the prosecution does to raise reasonable doubt.

The system balances out only because the defendant is PRESUMED innocent until PROVEN guilty beyond a reasonable doubt to the satisfaction of a jury of his peers. This is the primary bulwark against prosecutorial misconduct and judicial tyranny.

[Blind groper]

if judgment is to be left to expert, then a single justice, or at most a three judge panel is what you want, not a jury of "experts".

If we used professional jurors, the number would be a matter for some debate. I do not know the optimum. Certainly, 12 would not be needed. 3 might be too few? Research has shown that more decision makers improves the odds of correct decisions. Perhaps 6???

The way I would do it, in the impossible off chance it would be left to me, would be to advertise for fresh graduate, and then use an aptitude test to find tose best suited to clear rational thinking. Then give them a further 12 months of tertiary education in those things relevant to being a juror. A diploma at the end for those successful.

If many nations adopted this procedure, a system of jury swaps could also be set up, so that an American jury could preside over a NZ trial, if it was too well publicised in NZ, and vice versa.

[Brian Peacock]

Professional jurors would be like moderators for society, and we all know what moderators are like, eh?

[JimC]

Professional jurors would be like moderators for society, and we all know what moderators are like, eh?

Smart, utterly professional, and sexy with it?

[mistermack]

The jury system would be ok, if the people were intelligent and unbiased.

But in the US, that's quite a rare thing.
That's why the US has such a performance before big trials, in selecting the jury.
No other country gets anywhere near the US, for jiggling the jury before the trial.

And that in itself is positive proof of what I said, that the US isn't capable of producing an intelligent unbiased jury.
Having said that, the UK has a mysterious method of calling people for jury service. There is obviously an under-the-counter selection process going on, so maybe the same applies here.

What I do admire in the American system, is the way that real assholes get a seriously long sentence. Something that rarely happens here.