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My feeling has always been that we should reengineer our jury system. Jurists should be professionals, not a random nobody pulled from the community. They shoul

My feeling has always been that we should reengineer our jury system. Jurists should be professionals, not a random nobody pulled from the community. They should be independent, private employees with a code of ethics and training in skepticism and the sciences of statistics and evidence. Also, they could specialize in fields relevant to certain cases. In our current system, we look for the most ignorant juries so that the lawyers can fill their heads with whatever knowledge they please, unencumbered by facts. In the new system, professional jurists would be paid for by the courts, but not directly employed by them or the government. The prosecution and defense could have their pick that they must agree on just like now, but they would be basing their pick on the professional reputation of the jurist, not exploitable characteristics or ignorance.

white-flame 9y ago
I have heard that the intent of the term "trial by peers" was that the jury should be full of people with understanding and similarly experienced to the accused, so they would be well-versed in the specific nuance and details around the accusations. Like if a banker was on trial for financial crimes, the jury should be randomly selected bankers. Jury selection today specifically selects against "peers" of the accused. (and as you also mentioned, against "peers" of anything in general :-P )
- michaelmrose 9y ago
  Peers in context are your fellow citizens nothing more.
  - bryanrasmussen 9y ago
    Peers is a word that could be unpacked to mean more than just fellow citizens though, and to prove that it originally meant only fellow citizens runs into all the problems inherent in authorial intent multiplied by the number of people who worked on the constitution. Hence the need for supreme court interpretation. Peers in context have been interpreted to mean your fellow citizens, nothing more. Although I'd like to note that letting a jury of bankers sit on a financial crime might mean no banker ever got convicted. So the whole more exacting definition of peers argument has some definite problems.
    - dragonwriter 9y ago
      > Peers is a word that could be unpacked to mean more than just fellow citizens though, and to prove that it originally meant only fellow citizens runs into all the problems inherent in authorial intent multiplied by the number of people who worked on the constitution. No, it absolutely does not, because neither the phrase nor any alternative phrase on the subject incorporating a reference to “peers” appears in the Constitution, which instead provides (in the Sixth Amendment) for an “impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law”. (It is a common rephrasing of a guarantee—“the lawful judgment of his peers”—in Magna Carta which unmistakably was an product of the barons’ insistence that members of their formal social station should render verdicts against them.)
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > I have heard that the intent of the term "trial by peers" was that the jury should be full of people with understanding and similarly experienced to the accused You have heard wrong. The term is a rephrasing of a guarantee in Magna Carta [0], and refers to the right to be judged by others of the same formal social station. [0] in one English translation, “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
DINKDINK 9y ago
>Jurists should be professionals, not a random nobody pulled from the community. [...] In the new system, professional jurists would be paid for by the courts, but not directly employed by them or the government. Jurist are as impartial as you can get. Making someone a paid professional jurist doesn't magically strip them of all their biases. Courts are intimately familiar with this, precisely when they ask jurists "Do you think Police are less likely to lie under oath than a normal person" in voir dire because judges know that police are just as corruptible as the rest of us. Your proposal is basically creating a system by which a lawyer cannot ensure that your are judged by a jury of your peers. The problems with the judicial system are people based /not/ jury based. Jury duty is the one chance that citizens can make a direct action in the power of the state and you are proposing changing that and some how having the government to pay that person but also simultaneously not being paid by the government.
- rufusroflpunch 9y ago
  What I am proposing would certainly require a Constitutional amendment (in the US, at least). It is a departure from the "jury of your peers", which is the intention. The specificity of modern scientific evidence warrants rethinking the way we select juries. A jury of normal citizens is just not equipped, educationally, for the job. Specialists are required with intimate subject knowledge. I am proposing that the expense of the jury be covered by the court (as it is now for citizen juries, and it is also is with public defenders), but that they not be employees of the court. Again, like public defenders. It certainly wouldn't be a perfect system, but I believe it plugs some of the holes that have appeared in our current system of jury selection.
darepublic 9y ago
The court should not permit speculative testimony of this nature to be counted as evidence in the same way that lie detector tests are inadmissible or hearsay.
inimino 9y ago
This is a better argument for the importance of public education than it is for creating a new profession.

white-flame 9y ago

I have heard that the intent of the term "trial by peers" was that the jury should be full of people with understanding and similarly experienced to the accused, so they would be well-versed in the specific nuance and details around the accusations. Like if a banker was on trial for financial crimes, the jury should be randomly selected bankers. Jury selection today specifically selects against "peers" of the accused. (and as you also mentioned, against "peers" of anything in general :-P )

michaelmrose 9y ago
Peers in context are your fellow citizens nothing more.
- bryanrasmussen 9y ago
  Peers is a word that could be unpacked to mean more than just fellow citizens though, and to prove that it originally meant only fellow citizens runs into all the problems inherent in authorial intent multiplied by the number of people who worked on the constitution. Hence the need for supreme court interpretation. Peers in context have been interpreted to mean your fellow citizens, nothing more. Although I'd like to note that letting a jury of bankers sit on a financial crime might mean no banker ever got convicted. So the whole more exacting definition of peers argument has some definite problems.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Peers is a word that could be unpacked to mean more than just fellow citizens though, and to prove that it originally meant only fellow citizens runs into all the problems inherent in authorial intent multiplied by the number of people who worked on the constitution. No, it absolutely does not, because neither the phrase nor any alternative phrase on the subject incorporating a reference to “peers” appears in the Constitution, which instead provides (in the Sixth Amendment) for an “impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law”. (It is a common rephrasing of a guarantee—“the lawful judgment of his peers”—in Magna Carta which unmistakably was an product of the barons’ insistence that members of their formal social station should render verdicts against them.)
dragonwriter 9y ago
> I have heard that the intent of the term "trial by peers" was that the jury should be full of people with understanding and similarly experienced to the accused You have heard wrong. The term is a rephrasing of a guarantee in Magna Carta [0], and refers to the right to be judged by others of the same formal social station. [0] in one English translation, “No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

DINKDINK 9y ago

>Jurists should be professionals, not a random nobody pulled from the community. [...] In the new system, professional jurists would be paid for by the courts, but not directly employed by them or the government. Jurist are as impartial as you can get. Making someone a paid professional jurist doesn't magically strip them of all their biases. Courts are intimately familiar with this, precisely when they ask jurists "Do you think Police are less likely to lie under oath than a normal person" in voir dire because judges know that police are just as corruptible as the rest of us. Your proposal is basically creating a system by which a lawyer cannot ensure that your are judged by a jury of your peers. The problems with the judicial system are people based /not/ jury based. Jury duty is the one chance that citizens can make a direct action in the power of the state and you are proposing changing that and some how having the government to pay that person but also simultaneously not being paid by the government.

rufusroflpunch 9y ago
What I am proposing would certainly require a Constitutional amendment (in the US, at least). It is a departure from the "jury of your peers", which is the intention. The specificity of modern scientific evidence warrants rethinking the way we select juries. A jury of normal citizens is just not equipped, educationally, for the job. Specialists are required with intimate subject knowledge. I am proposing that the expense of the jury be covered by the court (as it is now for citizen juries, and it is also is with public defenders), but that they not be employees of the court. Again, like public defenders. It certainly wouldn't be a perfect system, but I believe it plugs some of the holes that have appeared in our current system of jury selection.

darepublic 9y ago

The court should not permit speculative testimony of this nature to be counted as evidence in the same way that lie detector tests are inadmissible or hearsay.

inimino 9y ago

This is a better argument for the importance of public education than it is for creating a new profession.