Wojtek:
"Again, my point is not that people are neglectful or frivolous while serving on jury duty, but that they have problems separating fact from fiction when their religious beliefs enter the picture - and that happens all the time, given this country inundation with religious symbolism, invocations of god, or swearing on the bible."
Well, that's the thing about the people, they are just as good as they are, not as good as we want them to be.
The case for juries is not that they are perfect (nothing is) but that the people have less vested interests than special experts, judges or police chiefs. (And the underlying assumption is that common sense is not different
substance from reason, but only a less refined reason, its rational component capable of being drawn out by cogent argument.)
If we are worried that people lack maturity, we are not going to change that
by taking away their responsibility for important decisions.
[WS:] I do not think that is the most effective way of arguing it. I think people have more vested interests in the verdicts of criminal trials than legal professionals. For the latter, this is just one case of many in their careers, and it usually has little bearing on their lives. The latter, however, have to live with the consequences since the trial is the only defence their have against both criminals and abuses of power.
I think that a more effective way to argue is to say that people are what they eat, both biologically and culturally. If they are fed mostly junk food, they become unhealthy and prone to ailments. Likewise, if they are fed junk food for thought - religion, patriotism, ideology - their minds become unhealthy and prone to delusions. However, neither of these effects resides solely with the individual (as the Anglo-Saxon thinking tends to assume) but with the interaction between the individual and his/her environment (both natural and social). Therefore, creating the right interaction between individual and environment can undo the effects of mind poisoning by religion, patriotism or ideology. Inasmuch as a jury trial setting can create such interaction, it can ascertain reaching the right verdict even though the individual jurors would not be able to do so on their own (e.g. due to religion- or ideology- induced delusions.)
In short, the strength lies not that cherished bastion of the Anglo-Saxon thinking, the individual and his "common sense," but in the cherished bastion of the continental thinking - the social, and the type of individuals it creates.
Wojtek