This seems like a fundamental problem with juries. If everyone knows you, most people detest you, and you can only be tried by a jury which is indifferent to you, is that jury truly impartial? What sort of people could be in Hitler's jury, say, to take it to an extreme?
You want a jury with good judgment. Maybe people indifferent to the publicly known actions of the accused are that way precisely because they lack good judgment. Yes, they need to judge the case in question, not everything the accused has ever done, but perhaps indifference to those facts extraneous to the case indicates they will judge pertinent facts in a way the public at large wouldn't recognize as just.
You're still better off with a jury trial over letting one judge make a decision. Your chances of finding impartiality among 6 or 12 jurors is much greater than taking chances with one judge. Unless you're a company or politician who has a financial or political leverage over a judge, then you want to avoid a jury. Sometimes a counter party can have all kinds of quid pro quo, indirect, leverage over a Judge or even a District Attorney. It's a lot more difficult when you have 12 people to deal with.
The vetting and training process for judges is a lot longer and deeper than the vetting process for juries (though voting for judges kind of throws this out the window). Presumably part of the purpose of this is to establish whether the prospective judge can judge impartially despite their private feelings.
Most of the world does without juries. In the US we don't use juries for all trials. The Supreme Court and circuit courts do without juries. If we don't use juries for our most important legal decisions, why are they better in the cases in which they are used?
I'm not a legal scholar. I'm sure untold volumes have been written about this. Just on its surface, though, it looks like nothing more than an accidental quirk we inherited from the English legal system.
This seems like a fundamental problem with juries. If everyone knows you, most people detest you, and you can only be tried by a jury which is indifferent to you, is that jury truly impartial? What sort of people could be in Hitler's jury, say, to take it to an extreme?
You want a jury with good judgment. Maybe people indifferent to the publicly known actions of the accused are that way precisely because they lack good judgment. Yes, they need to judge the case in question, not everything the accused has ever done, but perhaps indifference to those facts extraneous to the case indicates they will judge pertinent facts in a way the public at large wouldn't recognize as just.
This is actually the benefit of a trial by jury. If what you’re doing is so antisocial everyone hates you, you’re going to have a bad time in court.
Maybe next time try not to be such a dick to everyone at all times.
How many of them will lie, with hopes to get picked to be on the jury, just to get a shot at punishing Musk, whether he is truly guilty or not ?
You're still better off with a jury trial over letting one judge make a decision. Your chances of finding impartiality among 6 or 12 jurors is much greater than taking chances with one judge. Unless you're a company or politician who has a financial or political leverage over a judge, then you want to avoid a jury. Sometimes a counter party can have all kinds of quid pro quo, indirect, leverage over a Judge or even a District Attorney. It's a lot more difficult when you have 12 people to deal with.
The vetting and training process for judges is a lot longer and deeper than the vetting process for juries (though voting for judges kind of throws this out the window). Presumably part of the purpose of this is to establish whether the prospective judge can judge impartially despite their private feelings.
Most of the world does without juries. In the US we don't use juries for all trials. The Supreme Court and circuit courts do without juries. If we don't use juries for our most important legal decisions, why are they better in the cases in which they are used?
I'm not a legal scholar. I'm sure untold volumes have been written about this. Just on its surface, though, it looks like nothing more than an accidental quirk we inherited from the English legal system.