| > 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/) |