in my experience, the jury part of the criminal justice system works pretty well. I live in a city with a small population and lots of crime, so I serve on juries for quite a few felony cases.

to some extent, my fellow jurors have been more or less what you might expect. most of them cared a lot more about going home than the outcome of the actual case and didn't appear to have highly developed critical reasoning skills. at the same time, they were a lot more skeptical than you give them credit for.

in most of the cases I've been a juror for, it looked like the accused probably did commit the crime. but prosecutors are pretty good at making it look that way. in the end, one or two jurors who actually cared found a couple holes in the prosecution's case and persuaded everyone to return not guilty and go home. I have yet to be part of a jury that returned a guilty verdict.

once the judge makes up their mind, that's it; that's your outcome. but it only takes one juror to throw a serious wrench in the gears, and this usually seems to favor the defense.

I have been to federal prison. One of the biggest things that the exposure to such a wide variety of people taught me is that a lot of people are major skeptics and conspiracy believers.

That's why people like you have a moral obligation to not try to weasel your way out of jury duty. Have you ever served on a jury? It can actually be a good experience. What matters the most is not the jury really, is that your defense lawyer is competent.

Also the lawyers filter out engineers and other critical thinkers from the jury so that all that's left are people that think with emotion

> Also the lawyers filter out engineers and other critical thinkers

As an engineer, I have been on the receiving end of this over and over.

While the defense needs jury strikes, I really think that prosecutors should no longer get jury strikes.

If a prosecutor, with all his advantages, can't get the charge through a jury picked by a defense lawyer, he really doesn't have a case.

That makes a jury sound like a bad option, until you stop and think about what the other option is.

> until you stop and think about what the other option is.

You mean the system used in most of Europe? Seems to be working fine. Arguably even better than the US system.

Basically decisions by judges, none-to-little plea bargaining, none-to-little bail. You do have the right to appeal to several levels of court.

Not having a jury also makes court much less of a drama theater than in the US. Everyone is presenting evidence to a judge, not to random people off the street who have much less developed bullshit detectors and experience in interacting with lawyers and knowing what they are aiming to achieve with any given sentence.

> You mean the system used in most of Europe?

It is still too early to make a judgement about Europe. The US has had a democracy close to 231 years. Much of Europe except for the UK, Netherlands, and Switzerland was ruled by absolute monarchs for much of this period.

Alternatively, we're still stuck on the beta and they've learned from our mistakes.

Ah the Inquisitorial system that came out of the French revolution no thank - you a bit to open to abuse and technocratic for my British tastes

I have been on juries twice and I think there is a lot of room for improvement. In one case there was an expert witness that made claims about light during dusk which i was pretty sure was questionable based on my photography experience. But there is no way to challenge such statements if the defense lawyer doesn’t do it and even then it probably costs a lot of money to find an opposing expert witness. Most defendants won’t have that money.

As a juror you are supposed to judge only by what has been presented in court. But this leaves a lot of room for bullshit experts.

I think there need to be some nationwide standards about accuracy of different methods like alcohol tests, speed traps and especially forensics where I have read that a lot of completely false methods are being used to convict people. The judge should have the ability to call out such things based on established scientific evidence and inform the jury.

I'm pretty sure a judge can call an expert witness's bullshit, but that requires a judge to be an equal expert in that field, which is a terribly high standard.

Other options are also perfectly good legal systems (France, Germany etc)

So what reasons do you have for preferring an inquisitorial system?

What's the better option then? Judges have biases too. At least with a jury there's a chance of one person pointing out biases or at least balancing them