Because it's very disruptive to the schedules and finances of those affected with limited assurances of how long those disruptions may last. If you're self employed, should you be expected to forego an income for days, weeks or months to serve on a jury? If you're responsible for children, should you then be expected to find and pay for safe, reliable, ad-hoc childcare for an undetermined period of time? Lst week a friend drove hours to jury duty only to be told once there that his service wasn't needed - nobody's was that day. He's an employee with a salary so he wasn't impacted financially, but something like this could have a very real impact on someone living paycheck to paycheck or someone who is only paid when they work.
I have great appreciation for the legal system and the trial by jury process - I've been called twice, but never selected to sit on a jury. But I believe that the system needs to address the impact that serving on a jury has on the lives of those tasked with serving.
I'm not sure what you think needs to be improved.
It already does. It's called being excused for hardship. If you can prove serving is an undue burden, you get excused.
Choosing people interested in fact-finding could theoretically be zero-sum on a jury except that random people are not charged with crimes. In this same class, and it may be different now compared to 10 years ago, it was said that 90% of defendants plead out, and of the 10% of defendants who go to trial, 90% are convicted. Criminal justice resources are stretched thin, and it's in no one's interest to throw out a dragnet and haul in a bunch of iffy cases.
This lecturer also said most pleas and convictions resulted from pretty obvious evidence. It's not Atticus Finch or Perry Mason. It's not even Night Court. If a case isn't a slam dunk, the prosecution won't bring charges. So being charged is tantamount to guilt.
That's a nice story. In reality, it takes more resources to solve hard cases, so they won't get solved. Instead, some random poor bastard will get charged and will plea out.
How? Locally the system is a random lottery based on a pool of drivers license registrations. A standard mantra against voter-ID laws is that pool of poor people is highly challenged to obtain ID (which in reality is false, its just a mantra), so if anything there should be a statistical lack of unemployed people not a surplus. WRT scams and cons I guess you'd have fewer people lying about being members of the fully informed jury association or otherwise trying to avoid service, and that aversion to lie should make the system inherently fairer, so again no problem?
Because you lose a day (at least), you are not compensated, you may get tied up for an extended time if you get selected, and most of those of us on this forum would get dismissed during jury selection. So, it's basically a hugely disruptive waste of time.
At the very least, if you simply made jury selection such that the prosecution can't dismiss jurors, that would A) make being on a jury less wasteful and B) help rebalance the power between the well-funded prosecutor and the poorly funded public defender.
First, tech people often have a much larger store of baseline knowledge than common people. Neither lawyer wants this as you are bringing your own knowledge of what is "true" into the jury and the lawyers can't override this.
Second, tech people often understand statistics and error. Many of us will apply a very large Bayesian to fingerprints, eyewitness accounts, etc. Even things like "He blew a 0.8 blood alcohol content" is going to get met with things like "When?". He blew it when you stopped him coming out of the bar? (likely just barely qualifies and probably within margin of error--why are you harassing this guy for 2 beers?) He blew it 6 hours later in the station? (Holy cow, how was he standing?)
Third, tech people often have very negative experiences with peer pressure and this often translates to resistance against it. My friend put it best from when he served on a jury: "I don't care if he is guilty of many other things. The government charged him with conspiracy and has not proved their case. You can't persuade me to convict--the evidence isn't there. If you want me to vote guilty, show me the evidence." Result--hung jury.
I have never served on a jury in all the time I have been called. I once watched the defense and prosecution play chicken over who was going to burn their strike to get rid of me.
Since the prosecution is all about convictions rather than justice, they want us as far away from juries as possible.
[citation needed]
Having done some study of voir dire and what people get excluded for back when I was in college, having gotten far enough in law school before deciding it wasn't what I wanted to do to have taken a trial advocacy class, and having actually not been excused, as a tech professional, the only time I've been in a jury group that wasn't excused as a group prior to voir dire, I've seen no evidence that this is the case.
> First, tech people often have a much larger store of baseline knowledge than common people.
Honestly, I don't think anyone except a certain self-important subset of "tech people" thinks that "tech people" have a larger store of knowledge than is common among professionals with similar educational requirements (and technology actually isn't all that high in educational requirements for a white-collar profession.)
> Neither lawyer wants this as you are bringing your own knowledge of what is "true" into the jury and the lawyers can't override this.
Lawyers don't want you substituting outside prejudice for the evidence presented and influencing others in the jury to do so. Neither do judges. Because, you know, this is juror misconduct.
> Second, tech people often understand statistics and error.
Leaving aside that I think there is little evidence that this is a basis for exclusion -- some "tech people" do, though IME (outside of practitioners in the sub-disciplines of technology most concerned with statistics and error, such as machine learning) not much more than lots of other professions that no one would suggest are systematically excluded from jury pools.
> Third, tech people often have very negative experiences with peer pressure and this often translates to resistance against it.
I don't think there is any evidence that "tech people" are, as a group, less susceptible to peer pressure than anyone else. And, again, resistance to peer pressure is probably not in general a negative trait in jury selection. Logically, it would just reinforce whatever positive or negative factors existed elsewhere, since it just means they are less likely to get negated under pressure from other jurors.
> I have never served on a jury in all the time I have been called. I once watched the defense and prosecution play chicken over who was going to burn their strike to get rid of me.
I can see several indications of possible reasons for that in the attitudes you present in your post (starting with the fact that you clearly and proudly stereotype people by profession) that don't relate to either greater knowledge of anything or any of the other factors you point to.
If this is not something you accept as true then you should explain why. It would not be clearly evident to me (or most of our ancestors).
Some people make a virtue out of proclaiming their humble means/ability but veer over into being unscientific. This is like the monkeys who beseech the alpha-male that they are not threats. It is a good survival mode but it isn't an objective fact. Being self deprecating is not more sophisticated than arrogance.
So if you don't accept the proposition as true I ask you to check if you really believe that, or whether it is convenient to your peers or authority figures that you hold that belief. It is hard not to notice many geeks are self immolating for no good reason, that is why I'm saying these things.
Ruling requires a list of attributes such as detachment, emotional stability, being analytical, world comprehension, deep knowledge of the past and other rigorous training. Notice that we could test for these attributes, this would not be some handwavy 'some people are better than others' tripe, this could be demonstrated with practical trials.
Tech people may or may not fit this type. I suspect they fit some of any hypothetical list but probably not all of it. As I've said before, some people do fit the type better than others. It is a sort of Platonic ideal, even the best suited human on earth doesn't perfectly fit the type.
tldr; I think if you combine a programmer, an intelligence analyst and an historian with somebody of good executive function you arrive at a very crude but still very much superior ruler than the dolts (also demonstrable every day) who run our current system.
HN answers:"Maybe, LEOs are subject to the same imperfections as every other human on the planet, it's really goanna depend on the specific situation"
Prosecution requests dismissal, defense counters, judge agrees with prosecution, HN reader is dismissed.
Prosecution asks the same question to some random middle aged woman "sure, I guess it's more important, police officers are always supposed to be trustworthy.
Judge face palms, steam is coming out of the defense attorney's ears, prosecution is smiling from ear to ear. Prosecution requests the juror, defense requests dismissal, judge rolls eyes and accepts.
Random people on a jury can be misled in many ways.
I recall a study that found a downward trend over the decades, juries are on average are getting stupider as lawyers get to pick and choose for nearly any reason, they have been progressively more bold I'm their selection of "sheeple" jurors, but I can't find any references for it unfortunately :-/
I see a considerable amount of apathy towards serving in a jury. Why is it seen as such an inconvenience? I can understand if it causes financial problems, but I've seen jury dodging at all levels.
When it comes down to it, if you were accused of a crime wouldn't you want people who cared on the jury? If so you must serve on the jury and must do it dutifully.