The jury system in the U.S. originated in times when most communities were small enough that jurors were likely to feel close enough to defendants to have tribal/friendship/etc desires not to convict someone without cause, and to be sufficiently at risk from a defendant’s future crimes to take some care not to acquit the guilty. But today, those motives have broken down in many urban and suburban places, and trials are often decided by those who are too dumb to get off jury duty.
I don’t have good ideas for ensuring that jurors are chosen so that they feel like they’re part of the same small community as the defendant, so I’m hoping instead to create new incentives for jurors to care about verdicts.
Simply increasing the pay for serving on a jury would help to avoid the problem of jurors being selected for low intelligence, but I can’t tell how much of the problem that would solve.
I propose a additional ways of rewarding jurors based on results. If the jurors acquit, the jurors could get some large payment in 5 or 10 years if the defendant commits no crimes during that time, but no further payment if the defendant commits a crime. If the jurors convict, the jurors could get some large payment in 5 or 10 years unless the defendant has been exonerated or the conviction reversed on appeal.
The size of the payments would need to be carefully calibrated so that the average award is the same for juries that convict as it is for those that acquit.
Since it would take forever for the government to work out all the details needed to translate these ideas into a fair and predictable system, I’m wondering whether a private charity could implement them. Presumably there are significant legal obstacles to many kinds of payments to jurors, since it’s easy for such payments to be intended to serve the interests of one party to the trial. I can’t tell whether the relevant laws are broad enough to prohibit desirable incentives, or if so whether it’s feasible to relax those restrictions.