Comments are welcome below. All comments must be respectfully written and not contain misinformation of fallacious reasoning. We welcome thoughtful dialogue of differences.
Comments are welcome below. All comments must be respectfully written and not contain misinformation of fallacious reasoning. We welcome thoughtful dialogue of differences.
In principle, jury service is not a violation of rights. I see it as on par with filling out one’s tax returns; an onerous but necessary duty. My problem is that it’s unpaid. Jurors ought to be compensated by the courts for their service, and employers required to provide jury leave.
Professional jurors would certainly resolve the problems discussed above, but might introduce a new one; corruption. Professional jurors’ finances might need to be monitored for unexplained deposits that might be bribes, especially in high-dollar cases.
Might not the identities of these pro jurors need to be shielded from the persons they convict, as grand juries are? Retaliation against ordinary jurors is unusual. But someone who does this for a living might have ongoing exposure to retaliation from gangs or angry defendants.
The reason trial by jury was put in the original constitution was to prevent the abuses of the British colonial judges, who could and did pick their own juries and stack them with people likely to render a predetermined verdict.
It’s true that civilian jurors are often inadequate to the task of deciding the case before them. They also tend to skew older and whiter than defendants. Paid service would help to insure that juries are a fair and balanced cross-section of their communities.
I’m not sure that creating a special class of people qualified to serve on juries is any better that random selection. Jurors who know their communities and reflect them in their demographic makeup are at least as fair and democratic.
253dm5