Madam, – Michael Farrell’s use of the analogy comparing the jury system to a “lamp of freedom” lighting the judicial process is inappropriate (Opinion, July 6th). The idea that the judicial process must operate under a lamp for the judicial process to work properly indicates that it must operate in public.
There is nothing in the idea of the jury system that helps the judicial process operate more openly.
While the jury system is intuitively appealing, it is also deeply flawed.
The problem is that its intuitive appeal means there is no scrutiny of its operation nor debate of its merits.
The purpose of having twelve peers is that one would need to convince twelve randomly selected people independently. It is presumably harder to do this than say convince three, six or nine. But why 12? Why not 24?
And are they independent? Though we have little or no systematic evidence, there is anecdotal evidence that juries do not act independently but tend to be led by one or two with strong opinions.
And we know that many jurors are simply disengaged from the process. And are we not asking too much of jurors to follow complex and difficult evidence
The lawyer who can offer the jury an easy hook to understand the case may be more likely to win, but this is an exercise in public relations.
I agree that some judges too may not have the intellectual capacity to engage in the more complex cases, and may share the biases that jurors hold, but it will be easier to oversee their activities because we can study trends in judgements.
And judges could be forced to give rationales for their decisions and could be accountable to a non-judicial body.
With juries we have no “lamp of freedom” to view justice in action.– Yours, etc,