As a young lawyer long ago, I was "picked" for the jury (that is, I wasn't struck) for a two-week capital murder trial. Also "picked" was one somewhat-older law

As a young lawyer long ago, I was "picked" for the jury (that is, I wasn't struck) for a two-week capital murder trial. Also "picked" was one somewhat-older lawyer, who ended up as foreman. Each prospective juror was interviewed individually by the lawyers and judge, with no one else in the courtroom. From their questioning, I had the distinct impression that both the prosecutors and the defense counsel were OK with having a couple of lawyers on the jury, to help make sure that the non-lawyer jurors followed the judge's instructions about the burden of proof, etc. And that's how it turned out: A couple of times during deliberations, a juror would say, "Well, I think what happened was X," and either the foreman or I would gently ask, "um, do we have any evidence of that?" Another time, a juror said, "But we heard so-and-so testify that Y happened," and the other lawyer and I had to remind everyone that the judge had instructed us to disregard that testimony. (I was very pleased to see that after just a few times, we two lawyers didn't have to provide such reminders, because other jurors would do so first.)