Or, you know, abusers.

Which I consider a larger problem. Since so much abuse is hidden, the perpetrators also can sit on juries related to sexual assault cases. Delightful.

> The jury has to judge how a reasonable person would act in a certain situation, who is lying and who is telling the truth.

And they should do this by weighing the evidence impartially, not emotionally.

Exactly. The juror's ignorance or lack of direct experience with the alleged offense does not make him less able to evaluate the evidence. It is the prosecution's job to present the evidence with enough clarity to remove reasonable doubt.

But it does play a part if the jurors lack critical context. If no one on the jury can understand how a victim of sexual assault could be frozen during an attack, they might fall into the trap of thinking things like "how could it have been rape if she never said 'no'?" or alternatively, they could cling to some things like a male victim being aroused and assume that means the act was consensual. One could argue that this could simply be explained by the prosecution via expert witness - but I think we all know the Dunning-Kruger effect well enough by now to understand how that won't work in all cases.

I don't know if we should (or even can) aim to have a victim included on any set of jurors, but removing them altogether seems like a very bad strategy.

I think it is up to the prosecutor and expert witnesses to deal with that. The presumption is that the defendant is innocent. If the prosecution can not make a convincing case to an impartial jury (not an expert jury), then the defendant goes free. It's not perfect, but it seems better than the alternatives.

I think this is a fantasy - jury trials are the reason why you have patent trolls in the US, they don't understand first thing about intellectual property, it's a total clown show. Such meritless lawsuits get throws out of court in EU with a proffeshional judge.

The jury has to have basic grasp of the situation so that they can decide who is lying and who is telling the truth (and witnesses called by prosecution do lie).

Imagine being tried on sex abuse by people who never had a relationship, or an employment dispute judged by people who never had a job. It would be disaster.

The whole jury system in founded on ignorance. Both sides don't want anyone who was a cop, knows any cops, has studied the law, or was ever arrested. Often, people with any kind of higher education will be dismissed. Last time I went to jury duty they asked anyone who had ever been party to any legal matter to leave. It's pretty wild.

One of my philosophy professors was excluded from jury selection, and happened to run into the lawyer who excluded him shortly after in the bathroom, and asked why. The lawyer said it was because he wrote Philosophical Quarterly on his questionnaire, and that he routinely excludes people like my professor who are highly educated.

Why? my professor asked.

Because you don't listen to the lawyers or the judge, he was told. "Big brain" people try to play Matlock and solve the case themselves, or invent theories in their imagination, or get into absurd arguments in the jury room. They screw up the whole process that's designed to bring a high level of rigour and fairness to the situation--what should and shouldn't be considered, how the law applies, etc. They're wild cards that turn trials into a game of chance instead of an orderly adversarial confrontation that's heavily regulated.

People mock jurors routinely, especially the ones who explain their reasoning in interviews afterwards. But studies routinely find that judges agree with the jury's verdict about 80% of the time.

I see what they mean, but still doesn't seem good. I would assume "big brained" witness especially defendants are told by their lawyers to shut up for similar reasons, too.

Defendants often don't testify at all, it's impossible for them to be impartial and generally they can only hurt themselves. They have the presumption of innocence and they don't have to say a word to establish that.

Good points

Hans Reiser would almost certainly be free today if he hadn't overruled his lawyer and taken the stand in his own defence.

It sounds like he's basically saying that jury should be pro forma, rather than actually mattering.

No, because it's an adversarial process where the jury has to choose between the two sides. On each particular, one side wins and the other loses. Their decisions matter.

But here's the thing: their decisions, ideally, should be made on the basis of the evidence presented to them, their judgement of the credibility of the witnesses, and the instructions of the judge in how to map the facts as they determine them, to the law as described to them.

We shouldn't be okay with a juror voting guilty because of the defendent's race; we shouldn't be okay with someone who says "I'm just going to flip a coin"; I'm not sure it's a bad thing to exclude people who, in the experience of the lawyers trying the case, don't pay attention and invent their own rationales out of whole cloth and make an irrational decision by the standards of the legal reasoning the trial is supposed to provide.

What assures them that non "Big brain" people won't do the same thing? I think for most people it would more interesting running through the scenarios in your head, instead of listening to other people (lawyers) speak.

Their experience, I guess. I know that, of the university professors and professional engineers I know, they are some of the smartest and also some of the dumbest people I've ever met. It's like they invent new ways to be wrong, sometimes. I can easily imagine any of them in a jury room talking complete nonsense about who did what and why and how the law shouldn't be that way or mean that and so they have to acquit--anything but actually listen, follow along, and apply the judge's instructions.

A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader. But to the one who knows how smart he is compared to everyone else, the possibilities for true idiocy are boundless.

>> Both sides don't want anyone who was a cop

Except for cops. Cops certainly like to have fellow cops on their juries. There is an old joke about removing Manhattan jury cases to Staten Island. All the NYPD cops seem to retire there. So if the case involves potential police wrongdoing or even just police testimony, one side wants a Staten Island jury as many jurors will have at least some familial connection to the police.

The same thing happens with national security cases being tried in Virginia. This is one of the main reasons Snowden is unwilling to return to the US - the jury would be massively rigged against him.

Is it any more 'rigged' than many of jury trials that do go through?

I feel this case goes even further than the examples given. Not very familiar with US system, but suppose we had a case of a bar braul, would we ask anyone who has ever had a fight to leave?