[Duckeh]

> 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.

[xenophonf]

> it only takes one of the 12 to stop justice from being served

Blackstone's formulation applies there:

"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

In a perfect world, we'd only convict the guilty. The revolutionaries that founded the U.S. decided that justice would be better served by minimizing false positives---the conviction of innocents---instead of minimizing false negatives---the release of criminals. In practice, we've still sent many innocent people to prison (or worse, to death) despite our various protections against false positives, which includes the right to trial by jury.

> This would be a lot less likely if the panel consisted of people educated on the law (eg. judges).

People educated in the law (e.g., judges) would disagree with you:

"Those who wrote our constitutions knew from history and experience that it was necessary to protect against unfounded criminal charges brought to eliminate enemies and against judges too responsive to the voice of higher authority. The framers of the constitutions strove to create an independent judiciary but insisted upon further protection against arbitrary action. Providing an accused with the right trial by a jury of his peers gave him an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge."

(U.S. Supreme Court Justice Byron White, writing for the majority in Duncan v. Louisiana, https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/391/145/)

[Spooky23]

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]

> "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?

[bluGill]

As I read it, he means that one not guilty was correct. However the other he believes was guilty, but someone messed up the evidence. With the evidence messed up he was forced to vote not guilty on a guilty person.

[Spooky23]

Sorry I screwed up the first paragraph and missed the edit window.

[pc86]

Acquitted literally means "free from a criminal charge by a verdict of not guilty."

[Spooky23]

Sorry i edited the paragraph and screwed of up. s/acquitted/convicted/

[mikeash]

I don’t think it’s true that it only takes one to stop justice from being served. If one juror disagrees with the other 11, the result is a hung jury and a mistrial, and the prosecution can retry the defendant.

[pc86]

I would be interested in knowing how often trials with a hung jury are retried. Presumably if it goes that long and is that contentious there is a fair amount of resources that have already gone into it, would the state look at it as a sunk cost? Are they more likely to retry a case hung on 11-1 as opposed to say 8-4?

[Floegipoky]

> 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.