And I'm not really suppose to be on LJ until I'm done, but I couldn't resist.  And its almost 2am and even though I'll be waking up for church I'm not tired now so I feel like procrastinating.  And I just watched the third episode of Majo Saiban  (I'm really liking this series, ps <3)  Actually, I watched it a couple days ago, but I just commented on an Flist entry about it so I felt like writing my own.

A point made in the entry was regarding the lay judge system.   I'm American and a Law & Order addict so I had never given a second thought to the jury system before.  But when you think about... a person is being judged by a handful of the peers-- people who have no experience or training in the law whatsoever.  And the lawyers aren't there to instruct them in the law-- they're there to be as persuasive as possible.  So in the end, the person who "wins" my not necessarily be the one representing the innocent client-- but the one who is most persuasive.  How can a handful of average citizens really be competent to judge their peers?  Especially on such significant issues where life and murder is concerned?
 

When I was a senior in high school I took part in a mock trial.  My AP Government class went to the Law School in town and served as jurors.  For their final exam, the law students were divided into the prosecution and the defense and they had "actors" for the witnesses and defendant.  A script of the whole story was made beforehand and the lawyers could choose how they wanted to piece their case together-- which points they wanted to emphasize and which witnesses they wanted to question.  Afterwards we were left to discuss the person's innocence.  And while this didn't exactly model real life-- I saw how easy it was for me to manipulate everyone to agree with me.  Obviously it was partly because we weren't allowed to be "hung" and some wanted to be done as soon as possible.  But others did disaggree strongly-- and I finally convinved them using arguments that probably weren't so proper-- something the lawyer wouldn't have been able to say without objection.  So when you think about it, a lawyer only needs to convince one individual on the jury to have a strong chance at "winning".  And in this mock trial, we found the guy guilty.  Not because he actually was (since it wasn't in the script that he was actually guilty or innocent) but because the prosecution was better (eloquently and rationally) than the defense (who didn't do they great of job obviously).  But is this okay?  Should someone's future really be left up to a handful of amateurs and two professionals battling to persuade them?