In the United States, trial by jury, having a jury of regular fellow citizens in criminal cases, is considered one of the most fundamental core aspects of a free constitutional democratic society with a fair justice system. One of the core ideas with it is that justice is not in the hands of a minority elite, ie. those who are in power, but in the hands of the people. It reduces and avoids tyranny and oligarchies, where the elite ruling class judges and sentences citizens.
Not all countries have implemented the concept of trial-by-jury of citizens. Instead, in many countries criminal trials are judged by a panel of judges (and, sometimes, other kinds of legal experts). In other words, a panel of highly educated experienced licensed experts with advanced law degrees and years of experience.
While trial-by-jury might sound like a good and fair idea on paper, the recent Lindsay Clancy trial has really showed its main problems and drawbacks.
Two of the most prominent problems with regular citizens being in charge of determining whether the accused is guilty or not are that 1) regular citizens are not legal experts, and 2) regular citizens are often highly biased, with personal biases, personal opinions, personal feelings and personal sympathies or antipathies for or against the accused.
This was shown quite clearly in the interviews of the jury members after the mistrial: Several of them (inadvertently) revealed their own biases and their own complete lack of knowledge of the law and legal procedures.
In the United States, the task of a jury is to determine whether the evidence and arguments presented in court are sufficient to convict the accused or not. That's it. No more, no less.
The task of the jury is not to feel empathy (or antipathy) towards the accused and ignore the evidence in favor of (or against) that person because of personal feelings and biases. The jury is not supposed (and in fact legally forbidden) to ignore the evidence and vote based on whether they personally feel like the accused "deserves" the punishment, or whether it would better for the accused if she were to be acquitted regardless of the evidence. The jury is there to answer one question and one question only: Was the evidence and arguments presented in court sufficient for a guilty verdict or not? All personal feelings and biases must be put aside for this decision.
Also, jury members are absolutely (and legally) forbidden from presenting "expert witness testimony" of their own during deliberation. The jury can only discuss and consider what was presented in court, and nothing else. Jury members are forbidden from presenting evidence of their own, such as "expert testimony", that was not presented in court. They are also absolutely forbidden from bringing up outside information that was not presented in court that could affect the decisions of other jurors. (The core reason for this is that presenting such testimony or outside evidence completely bypasses the judicial process, completely bypasses the right of the prosecutor or defending attorney to counter-examine that evidence and present counter-evidence, and so on.)
Jury members are also absolutely forbidden from pressuring, intimidating or hindering other jury members. If a jury member, for example, requests some clarification from the judge or other person involved in the trial, the other jury members cannot just try to block that request and stop it from being made. And all kinds of intimidation tactics are absolutely not proper.
Yet, all of that is exactly what happened. And the irony is that the jury members who revealed all of that during the press interviews were completely clueless: They clearly had absolutely no idea that all of that is forbidden and highly illegal. They were all talking about it to the interviewer as if they had been doing the right thing, and they clearly had no idea how improper and illegal it was. (Whether any of this will have any consequences for them is yet to be seen. Probably not, especially since it was declared a mistrial, so the amount of "harm" done by this improper behavior was negligible. But we'll see.)
And yes, the jurors were very clearly and explicitly informed and instructed on proper jury deliberation procedure, and what is and is not permissible. They did it anyway, completely ignoring those instructions, clearly because they either didn't understand the meaning of those instructions, or because they didn't care (and had a mentality of "my opinions on this go above any such rules.")
And that's the main problem with jury trials: Regular people are not legal experts, often do not understand or dismiss legal advice and rules given to them, and have all sorts of biases and allow their personal feelings to affect their voting decisions.
This is, by far, not the only case where jury bias has either lessened or worsened the punishment of the accused, caused by personal opinions and attitudes overriding proper legal procedure. Often political pressure and political opinions may cause jury members to either vote to acquit a clearly guilty person, or to condemn (or suggest a much harsher punishment for) a person whose crime was minor or even non-existent.
In countries that use a panel of expert judges this, at least ideally, happens significantly less. Judges and other legal experts, ideally, do not have personal and political biases towards any particular individual people, and they absolutely and categorically know proper legal procedure and how to properly examine the presented evidence and arguments.
Obviously it can never be a 100% fool-proof system, and personal and political biases can still raise their ugly heads even in this kind of system, but it is significantly less likely to happen. Also improper judging deliberation because of lack of legal knowledge is pretty much completely out of the question.
(The concept of trial-by-panel-of-judges is actually not unknown even in the United States. After all, that's precisely what the Supreme Court of the United States is, to a T. It's a panel of judges that decides on federal crimes and other legal challenges at the federal level. So it's not like it's some kind of outlandish preposterous idea even in that country.)
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