That modern juries are inexperienced in criminal matters could be a positive feature. Judges may be jaded by constant exposure to narratives of crime.
I disagree that it’s a positive feature: when juries see each case with inexperienced eyes, they become wildly inconsistent in terms of how informative they regard the various pieces of evidence, and can much more easily be bullsh**ed by charismatic lawyers.
Professional juries (so long as they kept a distant relationship from the judge and are composed of a different group of jurors each time) would gravitate towards a consistent—and probably more rational, evidence-law-adhering—standard for guilt, and for the relevance of the different types of evidence. This would make the results less capricious and more entangled with the defendants’ actual guilt.
I disagree that it’s a positive feature: when juries see each case with inexperienced eyes, they become wildly inconsistent in terms of how informative they regard the various pieces of evidence, and can much more easily be bullsh**ed by charismatic lawyers.
Professional juries (so long as they kept a distant relationship from the judge and are composed of a different group of jurors each time) would gravitate towards a consistent—and probably more rational, evidence-law-adhering—standard for guilt, and for the relevance of the different types of evidence. This would make the results less capricious and more entangled with the defendants’ actual guilt.