The purpose of a trial by jury is to maintain the status quo and allow the rich & powerful to get away with anything & everything with minimal retribution if any at all .
That was the aim way back when the kings & tribal chiefs were the sole arbritrators of the laws ( which most people did not know in any case ) and it continued on when trial by jury ( which was generally a group of wealthy land owners ) replaced trial by the judge alone.
In order to keep understanding of the laws above than of the average man we invented lawyers and the principle of precedence .
All that had happened over the millenia is the original 12 ( if you keep Christian ideals ) is now 12,000,000 and they invent new ones on a daily basis so the system becomes so complicated even the attorneys can no longer understand it .
Trial by jury assumes that you can find a panel of objective thinking people with no prejudices or political biases who are totally ignorant of the event apart from what they are presented with in the court room, and that person has never existed and never will exist.
So in most cases it is just window dressing designed to protect the wealthy and make the rest of us think we are protected by the law .
The case that comes to mind was a young woman who was corned by 4 young men on her way home, she ended up stabbing one of the men with his own knife .
She then ran away as did the rest of them and the would be rapist ? died several hours latter from blood loss
The woman was found guilty of manslaughter & given a 5 year sentence on the grounds that she was an athlete , wearing a short skirt & sneakers while the men were all overwieght wearing tight jeans & heavy boots so she could have easily outrun them & escaped .
The 3 others who failed to render assistance to their friend or even report the matter were found not to have breeched any laws as by reporting the incidence they many have incriminated themselves in the potential sexual assult .
The boys were all from wealthy upper class families & the girl was a first generation refugee .
IT was a closed court so no media were allowed in or allowed to report on the proceedings apart from the basic facts that 4 men had cornered a girl on her way home & one of them died as a result of being stabbed, no names, no dates & no locations , all to protect the reputations of the boys families .
The girls brother worked for me for a time or I would not have known abut it either .
The only difference between then & now is mobile phones with video cameras and face book so the events end up becoming public knowledge before the system can put a lid on it .'
Then the defence uses this to claim a fair & objective trial can not happen because of the supposedly biased information that has become widespread .