Jury duty: Professional or of peers?

[GreenScoutII]

Hey guys,

I got called up for jury duty today, and while I was not selected for service, I did give up 10 hours of my day and had a lot of time to think.

The gentleman who was going to be on trial stood accused of four different charges of child molestation. I forget the exact legal description of the charges, but it sounded ugly.

It took a very long time for the court to select 12 satisfactory jurors as this is such a nasty type of case. It proved very difficult to find 12 people who could be genuinely impartial. As a father of four little girls, I'm not entirely sure I could have been impartial if I had been chosen to sit on the jury.

What bothered me is the number of people who openly stated that if the police arrested and the DA elected to prosecute this individual, he must be guilty. Furthermore, a large percentage of people seemed to not understand that in the USA, a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty. A lot of prospective jurors thought the defense had to establish innocence as much as the prosecution had to prove guilt. It bothered me a great deal.

I'm not judging anyone for being ignorant. I myself am ignorant of a lot of things, but hell, even I know the basics of our trial system.

As I had a bunch of time to think, I came up with the following question for all of you:

Would justice be better served if we went to a system of paid, professional jurors, or, should we keep our system of trial by a jury of one's peers? Why? Discuss.....

This is purely an intellectual exercise.

[Troublco]

I don't think so. I think if you had professional jurors those people would become so jaded that they'd make decisions based on appearances. They might understand the system and how it works, however I don't think you'd gain anything and could easily go opposite of the intention.

[jake]

I don't think so. I think if you had professional jurors those people would become so jaded that they'd make decisions based on appearances.

Jurors already do. Studies have shown that attractive defendants are more likely to be found not guilty, except in cases of fraud.

[Irving]

It'd be too easy to bribe a consistent set of known, paid, jurors. I'd say it's better to keep it the way that it is, but to let people openly volunteer. I haven't actually done jury duty before except for a teen court in high school. I had a blast at that and couldn't even stand how stupid the other jurors were (teenage girls).

[SAnd]

Who would get to pick the professionals? How big would the juror pool be? Some of the judges we have now shouldn't be judges because of their biases. I would fear that a professional jury would develop the same problem.

The jury serves two equally important functions. They decide if the person actually did the crime and they also judge if the law is just or being applied justly. I wouldn't trust professional juries to properly fill the second job.

I'll take what we have, warts and all, before I would trust any professionals.

[theGinsue]

I have never served on a jury. I don't want to server on a jury. If, however, I were called, I wouldn't work to find a way out of it. Either they pick me or they don't.

Basically what I'm saying is that I know we have a lot of idiots sitting on juries these days, but I prefer the system we have now to a professional jury system.

Of course, we could always have this:

I AM THE LAW!