US juries should comprise thousands of people watching remotely

NotBrooklyn2421 · 2025-07-27T22:42:07+00:00

What’s the jury selection process? Do lawyers and judges still interview every juror? Or are we just randomly selecting people to participate?

OverallManagement824 · 2025-07-25T19:44:41+00:00

It would reduce the importance of jury deliberation. You think the jurors all hate their lives so much that they willingly choose to stay locked together in a room for days, or even weeks, while they go through all the details of a complex case? Maybe they just like free lunch?

Now, instead of having a dozen people talking together and deliberating, you think it should be thousands? That sounds like a surefire way to guarantee the jury just goes and decides in favor of whichever party looks better at the first glance.

Proud-Ad-146 · 2025-07-25T19:28:59+00:00

Mmmmm gameified justice. Can't wait for the Twitch-streamed cases getting decided by fandoms and influencers telling their followers to convict.

Rainbwned · 2025-07-25T18:47:52+00:00

There already is a high threshold for conviction - unanimous.

Fantastic-Corner-605 · 2025-07-25T19:45:44+00:00

Do you really want social media mobs to decide whether or not to send people to jail or the gallows? You would have obviously guilty people go free because they look cute or are good at speaking or the right race and clearly innocent people getting punished because they look creepy, made some mean comment online, wrong race or religion, or give bad vibes whatever that is.

SconiGrower · 2025-07-25T18:57:56+00:00

Are you still going to summon people for jury duty? Are they all going to still need to watch the entire proceedings?

chickey23 · 2025-07-25T19:13:59+00:00

Can jurors be voted off for being slackers?

feel-the-avocado · 2025-07-25T19:29:59+00:00

Name suppression orders would be impossible to enforce.

BamBamPow2 · 2025-07-28T11:42:19+00:00

Biggest problem: who's watching the jury? Courts are tightly controlled. We know if they show up. If they fall asleep. If they are paying attention. Can't do that in your suggestion.

tomqmasters · 2025-07-25T20:16:09+00:00

Everybody would have to do jury duty hundreds of more times then. People already don't want to.

ThomasDePraetere · 2025-07-25T21:57:20+00:00

For the thousands in attendance and the millions watching at home.

let's get ready to rumbleeeeeee

BuzzyShizzle · 2025-07-25T23:18:46+00:00

No. People are stupid. They will not pay attemtion, or perhaps not even follow the judges orders.

It needs to be personal with professionals around them guiding the process.

You shouldn't even trust the average person to be a fair juror.

Japjer · 2025-07-25T19:23:57+00:00

Jurors are barred from discussing proceedings until after the case is decided. This is to prevent juror tampering. How would you prevent jurors being threatened, bribed, or otherwise swayed of they are remote? Likewise, how are you preventing jurors from recording these proceedings or sharing them when they should not?

Jurors are provided evidence for viewing. How would a remote pool be allowed to view evidence as needed?

Jurors are required to be in the courtroom so they can observe the proceedings. How would you ensure jurors are actually paying attention and listening?

Jurors are selected from a pool of jurors by both the defense and prosecution. This is to ensure there is as little bias as possible; for example, if a black man is on trial, a bunch of racist fucks are not an impartial jury. How are you going to ensure jurors are impartial?

angryscientistjunior · 2025-07-25T19:47:06+00:00

There will need to be a good way to verify so the jurors don't end up being a bunch of ai bots!

peter303_ · 2025-07-26T00:05:26+00:00

Ancient Athen juries were in the hundreds, with 500 typical. I'd presume the various speakers could only project their voices to so many people.

They didnt deliberate, but voted by secret ballet. Simple majority wins.

jfk_47 · 2025-07-26T10:54:45+00:00

Increase the sample size enough and you’ll get 50/50 every time.

ThoughtPhysical7457 · 2025-07-26T12:16:03+00:00

This sounds like a Black Mirror episode synopsis.

A small group, in person, helps hold people accountable. We see you, sitting right there, making the call.

Hundreds/ thousands of people remotely CANNOT be trusted.

Also the more tech you add into a process, the easier it is to game the system. Look at how many people act tough and say the most unhinged things on the net, because their parents, spouses and bosses will never know. It would take no time for people to learn how to game the technical aspects of remote jury duty.

jcalvinmarks · 2025-07-26T14:32:27+00:00

So, Trial by American Idol?

Hard pass.

HawksRule20 · 2025-07-26T20:06:04+00:00

Crazier idea, have 1 person decide

Avoider5 · 2025-07-25T19:36:44+00:00

Would essentially eliminate jury tampering.

breaststroker42 · 2025-07-25T19:53:21+00:00

i don’t think you’re supposed to post good ideas in this sub.

phaedrus1313 · 2025-07-25T20:02:22+00:00

I’ve see your post history and I wouldn’t want you on a jury of any design

AutoModerator · 2025-07-25T19:19:58+00:00

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WetwareDulachan · 2025-07-25T20:38:57+00:00

This is one of those ideas that will only ever be suggested by a man, and every woman who reads it knows exactly why.

LordMoose99 · 2025-07-25T21:16:30+00:00

So the issue is that if you make it a high threshold to convict with so many people your going to

1) Have people so biased and so uninterested they will try to screw with the process
2) Have it where only a few people get to control deliberation commentary and so your still subject to the whims of a few people
3) Have people who will just not pay attention as there at home/remote and can do other stuff
4) Be much more disruptive to normal life as so many more people will be involved (I have been selected ONCE for jury in 7 years of being an adult, increasing it by a thousand fold likely would mean a lot more people being involved)
5) Run into privacy issues
6) Likely lead to people who would other wise have been convicted getting let go due to now the unreasonably high bar you need to get a conviction for.

Overall 12 people is a large enough group to not run into most of these issues, put undue burdens onto people for attending, and which you can still have input without being drowned out.

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OUsnr7 · 2025-07-25T22:22:48+00:00

Yeah I definitely want my life to be in the hands of some guy in his underwear cooking dinner that can only hear every other word because he’s stealing his neighbors WiFi. This is brilliant and could never go wrong.

And so we’re going to have like 2% of our population on jury duty at given point?

Dextrofunk · 2025-07-25T22:40:58+00:00

I'm not against it. There are a ton of innocent people in prison right now, as well as guilty people who got off scott-free. There are many flaws in our justice system, and this is one of them. An innocent person can just get unlucky with a bad lawyer while the prosecution is on their game. 12 random people isn't a huge amount for a savvy lawyer to convince.

doc_skinner · 2025-07-25T22:45:17+00:00

How do they deliberate? Do you raise your hand and how you get called in by the foreman? Do you just shout?

Also imagine the technical disruptions. "I am not a cat."

New-Smoke208 · 2025-07-25T23:17:18+00:00

Too many dummies would be googling and doing their own “research.” It’d cause an endless stream of mistrials

Necessary-Science-47 · 2025-07-25T23:24:45+00:00

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ImOutOfControl · 2025-07-26T00:50:02+00:00

No one would pay attention. Many cases and jury proceedings are very uninteresting and can be repetitive to try and explain and show why certain laws were broken or why someone is beyond a shadow of a doubt guilty.

It’s not fair to the people on trial to not have a jurors full attention. If you don’t want them physically in the courthouse but had them in a remote monitored room maybe but not just remote

_u_deleted_ · 2025-07-26T00:52:49+00:00

one of the most popular posts and this sub!!

OhMyGentileJesus · 2025-07-26T01:09:30+00:00

How do we get all of those people to discuss the facts and agree unanimously on a verdict?

How do you gather questions for the judge? Do you limit the amount of questions?

There couldn't be just one foreperson for thousands. How could they possibly keep order in jury deliberations?

GoodGuyGrevious · 2025-07-26T01:17:15+00:00

When was the last time 85% of americans agreed on anything?

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DreadLindwyrm · 2025-07-26T01:50:02+00:00

It would still be equally disruptive.
If selected you still have to take time of off work, arrange child care/elder care, and so on.
You still have to be paying attention to the case all the time, and can't really do anything else.

And because of the larger jury pools you suggest you'd have to do jury duty more often, so it'd be *more* disruptive.

It also becomes harder to request access to evidence/testimony to be reviewed if there are "thousands" of people on a jury, and discussing the case in the deliberation phase - and ensuring the jurors aren't looking up information independently of the evidence presented in the trial - is essentially impossible, unlike with a small, sequestered jury. So is making sure they aren't talking to non-jurors and soliciting their opinions or being swayed by media (whether official or social) about the case.
It's also much easier for 12 people to determine they're deadlocked, and to return that verdict to the court than it is for a group of thousands.

Ateist · 2025-07-26T02:06:29+00:00

12 people being small enough is not a bug but a feature.

Populaces have all sorts of biases being built in - biases shared by very large groups of people, so they don't disappear if you expand the jury.

Mudlark_2910 · 2025-07-26T02:17:30+00:00

Watching remotely would also allow for a time delay. Many TV legal dramas would be immensely shorter if they could literally edit out the "the jury will disregard that statement" bits (I'm looking at you, Bull)

ifunnywasaninsidejob · 2025-07-26T05:46:53+00:00

I feel like the biggest problem with this is that each juror would feel less responsibility. Theyd be less inclined to listen to the facts and more likely to make a snap decision based on how the defendant looks or whatever.

MoutainGem · 2025-07-26T07:46:30+00:00

No man . . . don't you remember the voting on American idol and how BAD it got?

BrownBoognish · 2025-07-26T13:16:30+00:00

thousands of people watching remotely— googling the facts of the case on their own out of boredom during the trial and being compromised by media accounts? nah im good.

synecdokidoki · 2025-07-26T13:17:22+00:00

"A tiny number of people can easily end up unanimous just because of 1 or 2 highly influential and personable people on the jury"

You seem to be under the impression that the twelve people are just a random sample. They are not. If they were, yeah, making that sample really big would seem to solve a problem.

The jury is selected from a much larger pool, in an adversarial system. So the defense and the prosecution both have a hand in building that group.

This "dilutes the risk of influence to juries" just as well, but also makes it realistic for them to deliberate, to be sure they understand instructions, and to avoid well, everyone having jury duty all the time.

It being less disruptive doesn't sound like a benefit. A twelve member jury who you know, to some degree at least, isn't out in public discussing the trial, sounds way better to me than a two thousand person jury who is doing whatever they want.

I mean with that thousand person jury, why have the trial at all? Might as well just let them decide from whatever Facebook told them. Dystopian.

GeorgeRRHodor · 2025-07-27T11:22:26+00:00

How do you make sure people actually pay attention instead of watching YouTube or playing with the dog? Most cases are fucking boring as hell, but defendants still deserve a fair trial.

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rui278 · 2025-07-28T12:05:52+00:00

Even crazier - let's not have juries and just have the judge decide?

AutoModerator · 2025-07-28T14:21:24+00:00

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StalinTheHedgehog · 2025-07-25T20:01:44+00:00

I do kinda agree that jurors shouldn't be in a room talking to each other.

AnonymousUser124c41 · 2025-07-25T20:58:30+00:00

I like this idea. Some things may have to be worked out, but it’s a good start

Mat_At_Home · 2025-07-25T21:51:15+00:00

“Large numbers also dilute risk of influence to juries”

DOUBT

Miserable_Smoke · 2025-07-27T20:48:34+00:00

So basically organized mob rule? If there's one thing I learned in high school, it's that one can definitely be in a room full of 39 other people, and all of them are wrong.

reverandglass · 2025-07-26T15:22:12+00:00

To make it truly American, there should be 911 jurers on the PANEL: People Adjudicating Not Exonerated Law-breakers.

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