I trust an individual judge's opinion on almost any topic to be more intelligent than that of an individual jury member. But there's huge selection bias in who

I trust an individual judge's opinion on almost any topic to be more intelligent than that of an individual jury member. But there's huge selection bias in who becomes a judge, and so we end up with a pool of people who are mostly former prosecutors, which is another pool with a huge selection bias. All of the judges I know personally (though not all I've been around) are well-meaning, fair-minded people, but with maybe one exception they're all true believers in the fairness of the system, and all tend to give tremendous unearned deference to prosecutors. We should absolutely not make them the finders of fact in criminal cases.