> Yes, there may be instances where a jury foreman misinterprets the law, but that can happen anyway, so why attempt to enforce the unenforceable and pretend domain knowledge isn't important or useful?
The point of forbidding juror's own personal ideas about the law from the jury room, as you suggest people must do, is to reduce the likelihood that people screw it up. So there are less instances of this happening.
You're somehow arguing that the foreman's error, based on his own beliefs, is evidence of what already happens anyway (we can't do any better) and thus extrapolating that people should use their beliefs more.
Why don't we spend a little more energy and time teaching jurors how to read jury instructions? Teaching them to be confident enough with that reading to challenge bullshit like the foreman here presented? Make them better jurors, not just throw our hands up and say "use whatever you want when you deliberate, the trial was just for fun anyway."
The point of forbidding juror's own personal ideas about the law from the jury room, as you suggest people must do, is to reduce the likelihood that people screw it up. So there are less instances of this happening.
You're somehow arguing that the foreman's error, based on his own beliefs, is evidence of what already happens anyway (we can't do any better) and thus extrapolating that people should use their beliefs more.
Why don't we spend a little more energy and time teaching jurors how to read jury instructions? Teaching them to be confident enough with that reading to challenge bullshit like the foreman here presented? Make them better jurors, not just throw our hands up and say "use whatever you want when you deliberate, the trial was just for fun anyway."