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Comment by 3fe9a03ccd14ca5 | Hacker News Reader

I’m normally automatically skeptical of anything passed by our legislature here (which passes laws to ban plastic straws and water in restaurants but couldn’t care less about feces and mental illness all over the streets).

For this, I’m totally 100% behind the decision. A jury of our peers is as good as it gets, folks. Even with the drawbacks it will never get better. We need to protect it and honor it, and that includes letting those who have felt the strong arm of the law decide whether the law itself is applied fairly to other people.

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Putting aside the specific issue of felons serving on juries.

A hypothetical issue with the concept of "a jury of our peers" could be defining "peers".

Are there situations where the issue being litigated is sufficiently specialized that the average person would not constitute a peer? For example, determining whether an engineer followed proper practices.

At least in America, is so little shared world view between different segments of society (Democrat and Republican, rural and urban, upper class and working poor, west coast and deep south, etc.) that a given pair of citizens might effectively not be peers?

These concerns could be especially important since the law often depends on determining what a "reasonable person" would do in a situation which might vary depending on the "reasonable person's" background.

A jury of our peers is as good as it gets, folks.

Is it? How about professional jurors. Would that be an improvement? Or a mix of the two; some peers, some professionals. Or what about short-engagement professional jurors - selected from the citizenry at large, but then given some proper training and acting as jurors for a year. Or perhaps a cadre of professionally trained jurors who take a few months to become trained, and then simply do jury duty alongside their untrained colleagues. Is a simple jury of peers really the best we can do?

What specifically makes "professional jurors" better, though? I won't say the idea isn't appealing, but what about making them professionals makes them better than our peers? There are already a bunch of heavily regulated professionals involved in the process so it's kind of arbitrary to claim that we need to regulate more of it.

Why not limit witness testimony to professionals too?

There are many ways for juries to just get things wrong, to misunderstand their role, to misunderstand the law, and so on. Sometimes these errors get recognised and corrected, at a cost; sometimes they just plain don't. Some jurors simply don't know how to pay attention and keep track for extended periods of time. Some education and training in advance could create massively more competent juries.

Why not limit witness testimony to professionals too?

Because we don't have a time machine to place professional witnesses where they need to be in order to witness things to testify about.

Sure, but we already know false/confused testimony is a massive problem, so is it necessarily the case that limiting it to professionals would be worse? Professionals analyzing the evidence, video tapes, etc. We're already moving towards universal surveillance. Many states ban one-party phone/in-person chat recordings, but if we allowed one-party recordings anywhere, any dispute over conversations could be resolved with personal recordings.

Just a thought exercise.

In the jury I sat on, we had a question about the the law and it's wording. The response we got was, "you have already received your instructions." Gee, thanks. Someone more well versed might have better understood the definition.

One of the juries I served, in the UK, had a similar question about a specific aspect of the law related to the trial. There was a 30 minute recess and judge, prosecution and defence discussed how best to explain - presumably without influencing in favour of either side - then we were brought back, told, and asked if that was enough. It was surprisingly involved for what we thought a simple clarification.

Having been on the inside of juries now, it restores some faith in some aspects, but you also realise far clearer where potential problems and limits are.

Why not reject the law if it’s wording is too confusing and difficult to apply?

That is actual part of why we use non-professional juries.

If instructions are vague or confusing, they want the jury to decide what the instructions mean, not the lawyers or judge.

"A jury of our peers is as good as it gets, folks. Even with the drawbacks it will never get better."

I'm never understood such blind chauvinism, particularly here in light of all that's been said in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21710564

these stories of wrongful conviction seem to indicate a problem with public defenders more than the concept of jury trial itself.

The thing about California is that the feces problem and the plastic ban are related. San Francisco has had a high ambient homeless population for some time, it's just that when it came time to go poop, they would go in a plastic bag and throw it in a dumpster.

And then the city banned plastic bags...

Paper bags are still available

They're not viable for the following reasons:

* Paper can't adequately and sanitarily hold poop

* It's flimsy, recycled paper which is even worse

* They cost $0.05 a bag, which is pretty steep for a population many of whom have literally no money

Go to a dog park and see what people pick up their dogs' poop with -- paper or plastic?

Add to that idiotic idea to ban water bottles in SFO to "protect the environment". Now every thirsty passenger in SFO has to either buy a gigantic 1.5L water bottle or of a questionable health-quality aluminum one.

Sorry for diversion of a subject, can't resist.

Luckily someone invented La Croix so you can just drink your water fizzy, lightly flavoured, and in a super-wasteful tiny can.

Is aluminium worse than plastic if recycled?

Not sure, although you’d think the energy cost of re-making the can each time would be pretty significant. Also tou need to drink two cans to replace one water bottle.

My other favourite “environmentally friendly” thirst quencher when I can’t get bottled water? Coconut water, imported from god-knows-where.

Actually, that's pronounced La Croix.

If it offsets the vast amounts of delusional people who have absolutely no concept of the real world and all its dangers, then I'm all for it.

People who've been to prison are much more likely to be grounded in visceral reality and weigh things properly compared to much of our increasingly sheltered society, especially along the coasts.

Isn't a failure to judge something correctly the reason they went to prison in the first place? Are you saying they're so well reformed that their judgement now exceeds that of normal people? In that case, there must be other jobs their superior ability to weigh things can be useful.

Not all felons have been to prison. A felony is a charge and can be met with probation (lesser ones almost always are unless the person is a repeat offender.)

Your comment beautifully reinforces the point you try to refute. "Normal" people are naive and clueless about the reality of the world.

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