Juries are allowed to vote "Guilty" or "Not Guilty" regardless of whether they think the accused broke the law. They cannot be punished by the Court. This is all expressly designed to allow Juries to correct inevitable tragedies brought about by too-literal (or too-political) interpretation of the law. I.e., mercy.
I don't buy that they will inject mercy, especially if they thought about irrelevant factors to determine guilt or innocence.
Juries are unpredictable. Does that mean that they made good judgement or that they are swayed by good-sounding arguments?
If a thousand parallel operating "magic 8 balls" provides observed pragmatically bad advice, surely a random subset of a mere twelve "magic 8 balls" will not provide usefully better advice.
By analogy, if you need a team of programmers, one ineffective way to recruit would be to visit the "CS 101 intro to hello world" lecture hall of hundreds and randomly select a dozen. Obviously the team will be a smaller subset so somehow it has to be smarter?
Of course that's just one experience.
