Sitting on a jury

A jury is a group of people who did not choose the case, were drawn at random, hear the evidence together and answer for a community. American federal law states the policy in exactly those terms, a trial by jurors selected at random from a fair cross section of the district. Machines are already in the courtroom, from transcription to risk scores at sentencing, and predicting verdicts from case features is an active research field. The verdict stays with the jurors because the institution was built around who decides rather than around accuracy. A jury may acquit against the weight of the evidence and no appeal reaches that decision. Ordinary people, exposed to the case and to each other, take the responsibility. Replace them with a better predictor and the result is a judgment nobody in the community made.