[version_five]

Your anecdote sounds like an example of the system working to me.

I'm absolutely sure your assessment is correct:

   I lost a ton of respect for the ability of a jury of my peers to logically reason and responsibly decide

People as a rule are horrible at logical thinking.

But that's absolutely the right side to err on. Much better for twelve people to have to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt.

Put another way, it's way more important for the justice system to minimize false positives (wrongful convictions) than false negatives, so I'm happy to hear anecdotes where it's seemingly biased this way.

[arp242]

In principle I agree, but it also works the other way round: people get convicted for crimes they did not commit due to unreasonable and unsound reasoning. The fact that things like the Innocence Project exist is by itself already a huge red flag.

On balance, I'm not sure if it's biased towards letting people go free. It might be interesting to compare e.g. the UK with some European countries (in the US the justice system is too bananas on several levels).

[stevekemp]

Scotland has three verdicts for trails:

* Guilty

* Not Guilty

* Not Proven - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_proven

The latter lets you off, but has the connotation the defendant probably did it, but it couldn't be quite proven.

I like that system, but it seems there is a legal review going on at the moment which might abolish it.

[Loquebantur]

People "not being logical" renders their decisions random. Or biased in case, some common cause for such biased thinking is present. Like prejudice towards skin colors, poverty or whatever.

The former case results in GP's tie, the latter in the absurdly skewed prison population the US is known for.

People are horrible at logical thinking.

[Bran_son]

> the latter in the absurdly skewed prison population the US is known for.

Are you sure? Since most homicides are intra-racial [1] (despite the impression one gets from those the media choose to focus on), we can use victim race as proxy for offender race (I'd use offender race directly, but then you'd just blame it on police racism). Since it's hard to manufacture a corpse, or fake its race, we can further assume that data is largely free of police bias.

So white+Hispanic are 50% of homicide victims [2] (which we use as proxy for perpetrators), and 58% of the prison population [3]. For blacks, its 44% and 37%, respectively. Doesn't look particularly skewed to me. There is some anti-white+Hispanic bias, but since we're looking only at homicide to avoid police bias, we're not seeing the whole picture, which may explain the disparity.

[1] In approximately ninety percent of all murders committed in the U.S. over the years, the victim and perpetrator are of the same race - https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/wicked-deeds/201602/...

[2] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-... (for some reason the FBI groups whites with Hispanics)

[3] https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/incarceration-rates-by-r... (white and Hispanic are again grouped)

[unaindz]

> for some reason the FBI groups whites with Hispanics Because race != ethnicity, they even do the split on the right, on the ethnicity column.

[nostrademons]

Not necessarily. People "not being logical" might simply mean that their decisions are emotional. Emotions are not logical, but that does not make them random or wrong. There are still reasons for emotions, and frequently there's a large degree of truth to them as well. They often do exemplify bias, but that's why there's more than 1 person on the jury, and why attorneys are allowed to disqualify jurors, and why a good attorney will try to get a jury panel that is at least representative of the population if not favorably inclined to her client.

[version_five]

> the latter [results] in the absurdly skewed prison population the US is known for.

This is not supported at all. I assume you're talking about racial demographics of prison population. It's a complex historical and socioeconomic problem, biased juries may have some role but it wouldn't be on the top 10 factors.

[bsder]

> I'm happy to hear anecdotes where it's seemingly biased this way.

Except that it's not.

For most jurors, being in the defendants chair means guilty. Consequently, it's rare to find people on the jury who will make the prosecution actually do their job.

A friend of mine was on a federal jury for a conspiracy charge. He came into the jury room figuring it would be a slam dunk verdict--the defendant was documented to be out of the country by the prosecution when the supposed in person conspiracy planning was happening. He didn't even understand why this was allowed to come to trial.

But, no, half the jury was basically "He's done bad things and should be in jail." It wound up a hung jury in spite of the fact that there was physical evidence presented by the prosecution that contradicted the whole case.

[Georgelemental]

> it's way more important for the justice system to minimize false positives (wrongful convictions) than false negatives

True, but only up to a limit. The only way to avoid all false positives is to have no justice system at all, but in that case the criminal gangs essentially become the government and justice system.

[dist-epoch]

How will that continue to work in the future as society becomes more polarized and culture wars grow in importance?

Every trial will be a hung one, you will have one blue/red juror which will refuse to find guilty a blue/red defendant.

[version_five]

That's still a better outcome than people getting convicted just for being on the wrong side of the culture wars.

Failing in the right direction (not locking someone up) is one of the most important characteristics of a justice system.

[midoridensha]

If the justice system becomes too ineffective, then people will create their own justice "system" (i.e., vigilantism) to replace it. The entire reason for the justice system to exist is to prevent this.