I appreciate the intent to use random citizens to hold power, but prosecutor might be the position where years of professional training matters. Remember what Churchill said about five minutes with the average voters? Well, there is one bigger scandal in any democracy (it is actually mentioned in the article) and that’s how much someone accused of anything, specially if he happens to be unattractive, socially isolated, poor and male, is presumed guilty. This is far worst for ‘random people’, and allowing non-experts to choose who to prosecute without consequence would lead to spectacular injustices.

That’s why it is the jury who is made of inexperienced citizens selected at random: prosecutors now have the burden to convince them all, including those who empathise with the accused. They are judged over their career by how their prejudice leads them to bad cases, and prevents them from winning cases.

If prosecutors saw acquittals as failure on their part, and need to re-consider their world-view, that would work. I believe the article and the judge see the problem as them seeing such (rare) events as abuse of the system against them, personification of the innocent defendent public, and that’s the source of the issue.

I think that one solution is to make being a prosecutor a political dead end. In other words, convince the public to never, under any circumstances, vote for anybody who has ever been a prosecutor (except perhaps if the position in question is prosecutor, though excluding this exception would be creating de facto term limits which might be a good idea anyway...).

That way somebody only becomes a prosecutor if being a prosecutor is what they actually want to do with their career in public service. It would not be a stepping stone for a further career in politics.

If term limits (de facto or de jure) existed for prosecutors, that would put the brakes on prosecutors optimizing for conviction rate.