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Anything other than random citizens would necessitate a full time profession of juror and would thus render members of this profession employees of the state in

• Aaargh20318 8y ago
  > Anything other than random citizens would necessitate a full time profession of juror and would thus render members of this profession employees of the state in some capacity. Why have jurors at all ? Over here in the Netherlands people are judged by ... judges (what's in a name).
  • cimmanom 8y ago
    Because at the time the US split from England, there were myriad concerns about judges being influenced by authorities to convict innocent people for political (or personal) reasons.
    • mcguire 8y ago
      Because the judges and the authorities were the same, small minority, group of people.
  • candiodari 8y ago
    > Why have jurors at all ? Over here in the Netherlands people are judged by ... judges (what's in a name). Because it limits the power of the state. The state, in the US, does not have absolute power to convict anyone of anything. In the Netherlands, the state does have that power. That means you have exactly zero chance against a corrupt complaint against you. https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/11/20/onschuldig-en-veroordeeld-zie-dan-maar-eens-vrij-te-komen-5381805-a1532735 https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2016/11/20/onschuldig-en-veroordee... In practice, the police and prosecutor in the Netherlands are both rewarded financially and have an internal culture that glorifies getting convictions. Needless to say, this means they often successfully prosecute innocents, knowing full well what they're doing. So I guess you can just decide for yourself. Do you trust the state ? People like to answer in the affirmative, even when boatloads of evidence is available that sometimes significant parts of the state, including the Dutch state, isn't even corrupt, but outright criminal for malevolent reasons (meaning police trying to get innocents convicted out of spite, or revenge, has happened more than a few times). Jury trials provide some (imperfect) measure of protection against such abuses.
    • scarface74 8y ago
      Because it limits the power of the state. The state, in the US, does not have absolute power to convict anyone of anything. The state has for all intents and purposes unlimited resources to pile on charges, cover up exonerating evidence, they can legally lie to a suspect (“we found a witness you might as well confess”), they can strike jurors who would be more sympathetic to believing that police can be corrupt, etc. The defense doesn’t have an unlimited budget to hire experts, get evidence independently tested, etc. If you are poor and/or minority, the state can and will railroad you and the jury that holds your life in thier hands won’t be of your peers. Do you think that a cherry picked jury will really be that concerned if some poor Black kid gets locked up for life?
      • candiodari 8y ago
        > If you are poor and/or minority, the state can and will railroad you and the jury that holds your life in thier hands won’t be of your peers. Do you think that a cherry picked jury will really be that concerned if some poor Black kid gets locked up for life? I did say it's an imperfection measure of protection against that. But frankly, the court is just not going to take you seriously unless it's clear that you will appeal any decision you don't agree with it. Sorry but ... that's how the world works. Still, the alternative in force in Europe does not seem better, in fact it seems significantly worse. If you watch videos of judges in the Netherlands I assure you, first, the prosecutor is essentially the same, and second the judges ... to say that they are arrogant, unsympathetic and frankly assholes is a serious understatement of reality. Prosecutors are rewarded based on convictions, like in the US. I think this video, even though the source is a bit ... gmrbl (I DO NOT agree with 99% this website posts) ... But this is the reaction of Jaap Smit, judge and vicepresident of the Amsterdam "fast" court, to a camera: https://youtu.be/grW-nVrAWvM?t=18s https://youtu.be/grW-nVrAWvM?t=18s You can tell what sort of person he is, no ? They apparently filed a complaint ... and surprise nothing happened.
  • moftz 8y ago
    There was a case in the US where two judges were getting kickbacks for sending kids to a specific detention center for offenses as trivial as mocking an assistant principal on Myspace or trespassing in a vacant building. There's no jury in a juvenile court anyway but this is a case of a judge using their position of power to line their pockets at the expense of the futures of those kids. Not every judge is a good person but at least your lawyer can help pick the jury for you so some of the jurors might be more understanding of your accused crime and the circumstances.
    • toomanybeersies 8y ago
      I think that corrupt judges is a separate issue to whether a judge employed by the state cam be impartial. It's also possible to bribe jurors to get off a conviction. Possibly easier than bribing a judge. All classes of people are corruptible.
      • WillPostForFood 8y ago
        You'd have to bribe 12 jurors to guarantee a conviction for a single case. Bribe one judge, and you control hundreds of cases.
        • ben_w 8y ago
          This leads to an obvious question: should anyone have the right to know who the jury is? After all, if you don’t know who they are, you can’t bribe them or blackmail them. Same argument applies to the judge. One-way-glass might be a work of fiction, but video cameras are not.
          • gowld 8y ago
            How do you guarantee a trial by jury, if you don't have to prove to the defendant that the jury exists?
            • apetresc 8y ago
  • IIAOPSW 8y ago
    So you have a jury of one and its a state employee just like I said.
• Duckeh 8y ago
  > Furthermore it only takes one of the 12 to stop a miscarriage of justice. On the other hand, it only takes one of the 12 to stop justice from being served if they for whatever reason disagree with the other 11. > inally, a jury doesn't need law education. Their job is to judge the facts. They are informed of the definitions of the crime, and the evidence, and must reach a verdict of yes he did this or no he did not. Upon rendering a guilty verdict, the actual law part of the law is executed by the judge. Except they don't just judge facts. They judge based on the stories they're told. Even if the evidence (facts) is lacking, a good story can still sway people. This would be a lot less likely if the panel consisted of people educated on the law (eg. judges). There's a reason the supreme court consists of judges, not 12 (or 9...) random people from your populace.
  • Floegipoky 8y ago
    > Except they don't just judge facts. They judge based on the stories they're told. Combine that with an absurdly low standard of proof and it's no wonder that so many innocent poor people are locked up.
  • Spooky23 8y ago
    I’ve served on 3 juries. Two acquitted, and in each case the facts made the case. The hardest case was the one that was “not guilty”. The defendant was almost certainly guilty of manslaughter. But for reasons that don’t matter, aspects (time) of key evidence could not be evaluated, which created doubt. It was a moving experience.
    • grzm 8y ago
      > "I’ve served on 3 juries. Two acquitted, and in each case the facts made the case." > "The hardest case was the one that was “not guilty”." Would you clarify? I read the first paragraph as there was one guilty verdict, yet the second paragraph implies there was only one not guilty verdict. Did you perhaps intend two convicted, or alternatively, in the second paragraph, one of the cases that were not guilty?
      • 8y ago
• lightbyte 8y ago
  >Anything other than random citizens would necessitate a full time profession of juror and would thus render members of this profession employees of the state in some capacity. This violates the idea of an independent judiciary. What if we restricted jury duty to actively practicing lawyers? Who better to judge the work of a lawyer than another lawyer.
  • jtbayly 8y ago
    But they aren’t supposed to be judging the work of another lawyer!!! They are supposed to be judging the defendant.
    • lightbyte 8y ago
      Aren't they supposed to be judging whether the prosecution has presented enough evidence for there to be no reasonable doubt that the defendant did commit the crime?
      • jtbayly 8y ago
        No. There are lots of ways to twist the language around to make it confusing, and that's all that this does. They are not evaluating the performance of one or more lawyers. They are evaluating all of the evidence before them (all of it that is admissible, anyway) to determine whether the defendant is guilty according to law (as opposed to according to their own feelings, etc.). You can tell they aren't there to judge the prosecuting attorney's performance because not all of the evidence comes from the prosecuting attorney. Thankfully. If it did, you'd have a lot more false convictions. That's why we have defense attorneys even when we can't afford them ourselves. Likewise, you are not judging the defense attorney's performance, because that would require you to start with an assumption of guilt. Nor are you there to judge the combined performance of both of them. That doesn't even make sense. They are not a team working together. They are there to put evidence before the jury (or try to dismiss evidence in various ways) and try to convince them of a particular interpretation of that evidence. So their performance is affecting the outcome, but they are not the ones being judged.
• scarface74 8y ago
  Furthermore a jury of your peers is at least as good as the society around it. .... Furthermore any bias in a juror gets averaged over 12 and affects at most one trial. That’s all good in theory until you have the prosecutors put a “B” by jurors who are Black that they want to exclude. The prosecutors select for bias. https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/23/opinions/supreme-court-black-jurors-bright/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/05/23/opinions/supreme-court-black-... Furthermore prosecution and defense get to cross examine and dismiss jurors as part of the selection process. If you want a generally well educated jury you can get one. Ask your trial lawyer which jury is right for you! And if the prosecutor gets to dismiss jurors that are least likely to convict? Furthermore it only takes one of the 12 to stop a miscarriage of justice. Furthermore in the US everyone is at least somewhat indoctrinated with an understanding of what a jury is and a respect for executing jury duty faithfully. You have a pretty good shot of getting at least one person on the jury that won't vote guilty instantly so they can still make the baseball game latter that daY You’re completely ignoring the social pressure of being the one holdout that you would get from the other 11 jurors to go home and the judge to not have a hung juror. You’re also ignoring the very real psychology of how many people don’t care about the fate of someone who they can’t relate to - someone who is not of thier same race/economic background/upbringing. They are informed of the definitions of the crime, and the evidence, and must reach a verdict of yes he did this or no he did not. Upon rendering a guilty verdict, the actual law part of the law is executed by the judge. That’s all well and good unless the “facts” are being withheld by the prosecutor and not being argued effectively by an underpaid, overworked public defender.
  • stordoff 8y ago
    > That’s all good in theory until you have the prosecutors put a “B” by jurors who are Black that they want to exclude. So why are allowing prosecutors to exclude jurors? Would it not make more sense to only allow exclusions with cause?
    • scarface74 8y ago
      Just like anything else you can always find a “cause” that’s not racially motivated on the surface.