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[Tanner Lovelace <lovelace AT wayfarer.org>]

Alan MacHett said the following on 7/1/04 11:25 PM:


> Idunno.  I am heartened by both of your statements, but I'm not convinced. I
> realize judges are human also, and therefore also fallible, but I still 
> believe I would have more faith in three individuals with intimate knowledge
> of the law (and in my ideal world (this is my stab at judges), that knowledge
> is not simply the letter of the law, but also its spirit or intent, and a
> sense for extenuating circumstances (ie. when the law no longer applies
> (which *is* one facet of the Judicial Branch))).

Alan,

You've missed the entire point of juries. Juries are not supposed to
decide what the law is. That's what the judge is there for. As we
were told when I sat on a jury, the jury is the "judge of the facts"
and the judge is the "judge of the law". The jury hears what the
facts are, then the judge tells them what the law says and then they
decide whether the facts rise to the level of whatever the law says.
You can't have one without the other without unbalancing everything.
If you're having one person, the judge, decide the facts, then you've set
yourself up for however his or her experiences have colored the
perception of the facts.  With a "jury of your peers" you instead have
12 different people, each of which have their own spin on things, but
that between them, hopefully, they can come to a concensus on what actually
happened.

Tanner