I did read your post Krizon, and obviously in this case the jury was sensible, fair and talked things through properly.
In last night's case, the jury were shouty, talked over each other, made some rather startling comments and basically did not do the concept of trial by jury any favours at all. There were one or two people on that jury who were trying to stick to the case properly and discuss it like a sensible adult, but you could see them getting more and more frustrated with the bimbos and the opinionated.
Last night's jury was chosen from random selection, just as any jury could be chosen and the people were not actors.
If all juries were like the one you describe, I would feel happy with the system and feel that cases are being considered in a reasonable way. However, it is all too real that a jury could be just like the one on the programme, and that - to me - would be a horrifying thought.
I couldn't put myself through it, just because of the risk that I would get a jury like the one last night, who would judge me personally rather than trying to stick to the facts.
I would never say that all juries are like this, but they doubtless can happen, and that scares me.
Incidentally, Stav is saying that they couldn't possibly have found him guilty as the evidence they had was so little (photographs of bruises six days later, and verbal accounts under oath - he was proved to have lied in his police statements, there were other anomalies as well such as the condom issue, as I said, what more evidence would you ever expect from a rape case).
So based on Stav's points, he would also presumably not have convicted in the case you sat on.
