Statistically speaking, isn't it still better to have a jury of multiple people requiring unanimous consent, as opposed to a single equally fallible judge?
We don't drag someone off the street at random for most jobs now do we?
Here in Germany we have a system were "volunteer" judges are elected from the general public. On lower levels there then are two volunteer and one regular judge*, where the regular judge is leading the trial, but volunteers got same right to ask question and votes are equal, thus the two volunteers could overrule the regular judge, (both for deciding whether guilty or not and the punishment) while in most cases they probably follow the suggestion of the regular judge.
If the verdict is challenged upper courts only have regular judges.
Goal is to have, both the legal expertise, but also the "common sense" in the ruling.
* in some cases the numbers may be different, there are sometimes 3 regular and two volunteer or something in between
This isn't a normal job. We don't hire 6 to 23 people for a single job, and jurors aren't random. Yes, jury summons are sent randomly, but they'll have hundreds summoned and then jury selection starts. It's not unlike a job interview. If someone is on the jury who's going to be biased or unreasonable, that's a failure of their legal counsel.
But such a trial has nothing to do with justice. It relies on the dark arts of psychiatry.
You can have multiple judges decide over a case, which will work even better if you don't allow fake science into the courts.
And we also need to get rid of elected judges.
The developed world do just fine wuthout a jury system.
I'm unfamiliar with the laws and jurisprudence on bench trials in the US, but the impression I have is that judges are either required to simply follow the law, or are at least bound by custom to do so.