Yes you make a series of perfectly good points, and I learned about the Frankpledge, so thanks for that.

I agree it is not a utopian system by any regard, but I still think a country that has trial by jury is superior to one with bench trials only. Perhaps not in each individual case, but as a means of rebalancing the power of the establishment vs the people.

I've a friend who is a prosecutors assistant in Australia, having quite a dim view of the ability of my peers I asked him just last week how he rated the performance of the trials he had watched and he said he didn't think he had ever seen a jury get it wrong.

Then again he's just a big bag of relatively well educated prejudice and blind-spots like all of us, so there is that.