My experience of having been on a couple of juries, for one. People took the task very seriously and reviewed the evidence intelligently. I think juries are terrific. It's all about context and role. Ordinary folks are entrusted by the system to make very serious decisions, and they rise to the task. Most of the time, the system - I mean, The System - treats them like idiots, and they often live down to expectations.
[WS:] But that was in New York City of perhaps Massachusetts. Folks in these parts of the country are also less likely to delude themselves with religious idiocies. If it were, say, Tennessee (cf. Scopes trial http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial) or another luminous Southern state, I suspect that your jury experience might have been rather different.
Besides - if juries take their responsibilities so seriously, how come that prisons are populated by folk that many (including yourself) claim that should not been there. I mean, it is either that these jurors often err by convicting innocent people or - in which case the claim of jury infallibility is at least suspect; or they do not - in which case the claim of people being unjustly in prison is suspect. It is hard to claim both to be true.
Another point, the fact that people take their jury duty seriously is rather tangential. They take their religion seriously as well. The point is not that they render frivolous verdicts, but that they have problems telling fact from fiction, even if they earnestly try - as evidenced by the views on science and religion.
Wojtek