[MD] Krimel's Manifesto - A first draft

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Krimel]
Informed Juries

[Craig]
In the marketplace of  ideas we can allow falsehoods, half-truths, 
dubious claims, crazy theories, along with good evidence & 
well-supported theories.  In the long run, the latter two should win 
out.   A trial is different--it is one shot at determining the truth. 
If an innocent person is convicted, we cannot make up for it by 
freeing a guilty one.  That is why hearsay & prejudicial statements, 
even if true, are not allowed in trials.

[Arlo]
"If one is an idiot, does one really want to be judge by a jury of 
one's peers?"

I'm not sure if its Krimel's contention, but I see credence in the 
argument that the complexity of many trials overweighs the 
comprehension of many jurors selected from a random jury pool. Sure, 
the time is taken in the courtroom to explain all pertinent facts, 
but let's face it, when one's freedom or incarceration hangs in the 
balance, wouldnt one rather be tried by a jury of, at the very least, 
those informed or expert in the nuances of that case? I would! You 
can bet if my freedom hinged on some complex understanding of DNA 
evidence, I would want a jury of biologists, scientists or those 
expert and familiar with DNA matching procedures and trials. I would 
not want someone like ME on my own jury, someone who may be good with 
languages and computers but knows diddly about DNA and related procedures.

Someone once said that Goethe was the last man (pardon the inherent 
sexism) to know everything. What they meant was not that Goethe was 
omniscent, but that the amount of information available in Goethe's 
time was digestible by a single person. Now information is flowing at 
us like the oft-cited firehose at a teacup. We are all masters of 
only a very tiny, fragmented and contextually-bound set of knowledge. 
None of us can know it all anymore. None. And what does that say 
about our "peers"? That they may be brilliant doctors or welders or 
gardeners or financiers, but when it comes to having the ability to 
wade through complex information necessary to give me a fair trial, 
they may be unqualified.