John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> Trial by jury goes to the very question that is at the heart of 
> political science:  Is the government primary over the people, or are 
> the people primary over the government?

  The big problem I see in this case is that 12 persons *who have not
been elected by the people* are representing the people. They may or
may not truely represent the opinion of the majority, at random.

  Also, these 12 people usually have no education nor experience about
how law, politics and criminology works. What is worse, the views and
expectations of these people on these subjects may be colored, if not
even twisted, by the media. Thus they might not be the best people to
decide about critical issues related to these things.

> This is not to say that juries never err.  They do, and often blatantly 
> so, but in many cases where the jury acquits a guilty defendant or 
> convicts an innocent one, it can be shown that the jury was led to this 
> by systematic misconduct on the part of the officials of the court.  A 
> recent review of many dozens of American prisoners, convicted of murder, 
> who were later exonerated by DNA evidence, shows a common paradigm where 
> the prosecution relentlessly pursues the conviction of an early suspect, 
> ignoring (if not hiding) exculpatory evidence along the way, and in some 
> instances unknowingly allowing the actual culprit to testify against the 
> defendant.

  It would be nice to know if the result would have been different if the
jury consisted of trained and experienced professionals (of law, criminology
and forensic science) instead of random people.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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