I don’t see anything about this idea that violates the constitution. The jury’s makeup could still be “of one’s peers”. They’re no more likely to be on the take than standard jurors. They’d also be less likely to be “confused” by points of law.
Nor would there ever be any post-trial revelations like “juror 5 was a felon and he never told anyone -mistrial!”
Personally I wouldn’t want a “professional juror” if for no other reason than I want my jury to consider only my case, not compare it to the last similar case they had. Whether that rises to the level of interference with my constitutional right to an “impartial” jury trial the Constitution guarantees an “impartial” jury, not a jury “of one’s peers”) is a question I’ll leave to the lawyers, but my gut feeling is yes.
One reason is that a professional jury wouldn’t be as easy to manipulate with emotions as regular juries are.
If you are a plaintiff’s lawyer working a car wreck case, do you want 12 levelheaded, educated people on the jury (who have sat through dozens of cases) who will truly look at both sides of the case and examine ALL the evidence, or do you want a jury who can be played by simply messing with their heartstrings, because they aren’t smart enough to understand all the evidence to begin with?
How do you figure that? If I were in the business of bribing or intimidating jurors, I’d expect that a professional juror would stay bribed until I let him off the hook; under threat of blackmail.
Who would appoint these jurors, or would they run in “nonpartisan” elections? What would the minimal qualifications be for a profeeesional jurist?
How would the court system deal with juries whos views don’t reflect community norms? How would the courts deal with accusations of systematically corrupted juries?
Pretty cynical view of the jury system ya got there, Abbie.
Many factors weigh in against having professional juries. Part of the reason is that nobody would want such a thing. Despite many people’s view that attorneys usually try to pack the jury with people who are biased in favor of their case, usually they have to settle for peple who aren’t biased against it. Neither prosecutors nor defense attorneys want to give up the right to voir dire a jury that they believe will be beneficial to, or at least not biased against, their case.
Another factor is that it would be cost prohibitive. Right now jurors are paid very little for the time they spend; it’s considered their “civic duty.” What would these professional jurors get paid? $20,000 a year? More? Less? Is juroring going to be a college major? Remember, not only are you paying the 12 people who sit on the jury, you’re paying the other people in the jurypool who didn’t get selected (you’d have to have some sort of jury pool to select from; if you used the same 12 people every time eventually you’ll have a case where a juror should have been struck for cause). Moreover, there isn’t a jury trial going on in any given courtroom every minute of the day. You’d be paying a very large group of people a substantial salary when the vast majority of the time they aren’t even working.
Economic feasability aside, would definitely be some constitutional problems and challenges made to such a system. You’re basically substituting your right to have your fellow citizens decide your case and allowing the government to decide your case with 12 government employees. Such a radical departure from our current system would certainly be challenged as not providing a jury trial as that phrase is meant in the Constitution. Additionally, there’s some case law that suggests that people who meet the legal qualifications to be a juror have the Constitutional right to sit as jurors. Having professional jurors denies everyone else their Constitutional right to be a juror. In short, nobody would want it, too expensive, less workable than current system, probably unconstitutional.
What do you think the chances of a professional juror who commits a crime being convicted are?
Former/retired lawyers and judges might seem like a good pool to choose from.
Obviously they would rotate for each trial, that is to say they wouldn’t be like an umpire crew that work together. The 12 are united for one trial, and dispersed afterwards.
I thought I read somewhere that some nations do have this system (with my luck it’s probably some dictatorship!)
Realistically professional jurors would be better. But as stated lawyers want jurors who will vote their way.
You can make an anit professional stand by considering professional arbitrators. I have dealt with these people and have found them excessively biased toward business interests.
The best way is to have a pool of professional jurors and allow the lawyers to pick from that pool. However there are a lot of poor judges, who instruct a jury poorly or simply wrong. A professional juror wouldn’t be subject to such “bad advice” and do what is correct. This can work both the the detriment or benefit of the accused.
Costs is also an issue. I went to Jury Duty and was dissmissed for economic reasons. All the poor people (and coincidently all the black people there) said they couldn’t serve due to the fact they can’t take off 2 or 3 weeks for a trial. This cleary is an unadressed issue. (BTW we all talked about this in the room, that is how I know)
If we only have jurors who can afford to take two weeks leave off their jobs, or are willing to give up their vacations for it, OR are lucky enuff to have an employer that will pay them while on a jury, how impartial or how close to a jury of your peers is it?
I’m not sure a professional jury would be that much more expense than what we have now. Sure you would have to pay the jurors a whole lot more, but how much time is wasted explaining basics of legal procedures, DNA etc etc. The cost of the judge and prosecutors are higher than what an individual juror would be paid.
The rules of evidence could be modernized, jury selection and instruction. Transcripts would be shorter and so forth.
It would be more expensive by many magnitudes. For one, juries are not supposed to instruct or inform themselves on the law, and jurors with prior knowledge of the law, such as lawyers and judges, are instructed not to lecture the other jurors on the law and to put their own knowledge of it aside to the best of their abilities. Jurors aren’t expected to know the law, they are expected to weigh the facts as presented by the parties and apply the law to those facts as it is explained to them by the law. Any additional knowledge of the law they gained as a result of being regular jurors would be superfluous, and usage of knowledge of facts or law gained outside that proceeding would be improper.
Even if such a thing were permissible, it would still lose out on a cost-benefit analysis. The knowledge gained that would shorten the length of subsequent trial would not come close to offsetting the costs of creating what amounts to a new branch of the judiciary with salaried employees, most of whom aren’t working most of the time.
Besides, be wary of anyone who wants to be on a jury! 
Isn’t the presiding judge over the case kind of a ‘professional juror’? I’d guess a part of his/her job is to understand the finer points of the law and make sure it’s presented to the jury in a way they(even though they may have no law experience) will understand it.
I know it’s a stretch, it’s just a thought.
-K
One of the big reasons for the jury system is to ensure that the police and judges have some outside influence to them. Professional Jurors would become part of the system not an outside moderator to the system.
Seems like there would be a potential for institutional bias.
While this is in GQ, it looks more like a debate, so allow me to voice an outsider’s opinion.
As Kaotic Newtral remarked, a professional jury would in effect be close to the system of professional judges that exists in continental countries. It would seem to be preferable to go the whole way.
The continental system has career judges, who start fresh out of law school, besides ‘late entrants’ who first have a career as lawyer or professor. Of course this will allow for personal bias in the cases that judges sit alone, but in appeal there will be at least three judges on the case. Furthermore there are internal controls for judges who are too far out. (yes, I am aware that the U.S. system is not too dissimilar, but I felt it necessary to describe the continental system in some detail)
Of course, you can criticise this system for lots of reasons, but in continental Europe it is well accepted and practically no-one wants to go to a jury system.
In the U.S., however, it would probably be more difficult to get rid of layman juries. For one, it appears to be deeply entrenched in the social perception of a fair trial, and furthermore it is in the constitution. Besides, I got the impression that nomination of judges has become politicized in the U.S., which means that there is no general belief in the existence of neutral judges. That would preclude relying solely on professional juries, or judges.
Answer to the OP: We do, it’s called Congress 
In my experience, defense lawyers DO NOT want educated, informed people on juries. They want people who are easily swayed by emotion, and people who do not use reason and logic. The “voir dire” ceremony (where potential jurors are selected and dismissed , is a farce-anyone who has been through this knows that the plaintiff’s lawyer wants the lowest common denominator.
Criminal defendants, and the parties in a civil suit, may waive their right to a jury trial. If they do so then the judge serves as the finder of fact, the role normally played by the jury.
I don’t think anyone ever really much believed that judges were completely impartial and neutral. No human being is. But I think most people believe most judges are able to put aside their ideology when hearing cases. There are also procedures for removing a judge (recusal) if the judge’s ability to hear the case is believed to be compromised. Most notably recently, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recused himself from hearing a case involving the Pledge of Allegience because he had made a speech critiizing a lower court ruling in the case, and refused to recuse himself from a case involving Vice-president Cheney after it was revealed that he and Cheney had gone on a hunting trip together.
Most appointed judges (and in the main it’s federal judges who are appointed, most state judges are elected) are confirmed with little fanfare or controversy. The battles over a few high profile nominees leads to a perception that the entire process is even more politicized than it is.
Another potential problem would be finding professional jurors who would be willing to work for $18 a day. At least that’s what I got paid last time I was on jury duty.
I hear this a lot, and it’s not true. Why does everyone seem to believe the prosecution is going to present an airtight case against an unquestionably guilty defendant, and the defense attorney’s job is to find 12 slack-jawed knuckle-dragging mouthbreathers that they can either smokescreen or make an illogical emotional appeal to? The prosecution will often have a flawed case that you want rational people to take a logical look at, and you don’t want somebody who foolishly believes that anyone indicted with a crime must be legally guilty of it. There may be extenuating or mitigating circumstances in an emotionally charged case such that you would want a juror capable of taking a dispassionate look at the evidence. The bottom line is that you want a juror who will be sympathetic to your case and the facts as you present them or at the very least not be biased against it, whether that juror be a Harvard professor or a high school dropout.
My experience with voir dire was that they questioned us all to see if we had any obvious biases. If you were the type of person who would believe anything the cops said without question, then they didn’t want you. I never got the impression that they were trying to weed out the smart people.
And in my case (murder and armed robbery) the prosecution’s case was actually quite flimsy. We ended up convicting the guy of only a minor weapons offence.