sick of this know-it-all cunt, wish he'd die already
theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/05/england-justice-system-jury-trials
The “right to a jury” is a hangover from a medieval entitlement to judgment by one’s “peers” over the whim of an unelected manorial lord or other authority. Today, a criminal trial tends to depend overwhelmingly on scientific analysis or, in fraud cases, on technicalities of finance. Leaving this to groups of amateur strangers is absurd, their reasons for ever secret. Anyway, if they make a mistake, the judge can overrule them. Last year’s intriguing Channel 4 docudrama The Jury: Murder Trial had two juries emotionally but plausibly debating the same real-life case and reaching different conclusions. It should have led to the death of juries on the spot.
Like all good drama it has hovering over it the climax of retribution, here in the form of prison. In other civilised countries, where experts administer justice, the purpose of denying the guilty their freedom is their rehabilitation. In Britain it is merely punishment, which is why reoffending is so rife.
Juries are supported by a few middle-class philanthropists who enjoy jury service as a version of “doing good among the poor”. We do not let them dissect bodies in an operating theatre or decide how to design a building. Perhaps a minority of cases may depend on public taste, but that must be truly tiny.