Jury trials in India ?

Jury trials are swayed by emotions. 

We know of the hundreds of cases that happened in the US that convicted quite a lot of Afro Americans and may be Arab looking people now in spite of the fact that the jury is selected from a wide range of representative people. 

In US you have the option to go with a Jury or a Judge, it is just that when you can tell a story "Perry mason" style it is better to be with a jury (Emotions are important - Watch Good Wife, Boston Legal etc etc). If you are representing yourself if is better to be with a Judge as you do not need to appeal to the Jury and avoid all the costs thereof (In the USA, everything is an industry and money is involved) 

As was there in the post before, do you believe in a doctor who has trained in the best institute to treat you or a bunch of people who have watched enough TV (including Gray's Anatomy and Dr House or Scrubs) to provide an informed medical opinion. 

Given a choice, I would rather go with somebody who understands the modalities of what constitutes evidence. As in the case you had mentioned, are we being biased having not read through the case in detail, is the evidence enough to convict somebody. As in cricket they say, let the benefit of doubt goes to the batsman, we should not rush to convict somebody who is not guilty. Let a few guilty roam around, but ensure not a single not guilty get penalized. 

We also have the tendency to think, rich and they would fix it, yes the option is available and it might also be misused, but are we not having a blanket and a myopic view that every rich man is a crook and will misuse his (ill gotten wealth - I even assumed he made the money through wrong means) and already he has been made the villain. 

Remember the old movies, somebody with a glass of wine/whisky and a pretty damsel and rich is the Villain!, may be it is time to get out of the Bourgeois mind set.

It is simple when I say my experience, when I had to go to the court I had the option to select the Jury or the Judge and was referred to the same link that I had attached. 

The law is written and says there is an option, that means it is available, when , where is another matter. 

It is not that using Wikipedia is wrong, if we can pull any content from the Internet and call it as being authentic, what is wrong with Wikipedia at least it is peer reviewed. Take it with a pinch of salt, see who is writing and see the references, if it makes sense , there is nothing wrong in using it as source. 

An opinion from a Law Journal or from a educational website as is the case, is as good as it can be. As i said, rather than take a opinion from an half baked professional I would fall back in material that is in Wikipedia at least it does not have the bias of the individual. 

It is a matter of conjecture as to what is good for India, if you cannot make something good of the system you already have in place and with the option to constitute a bench in the event (Which is a number of eminent people of experience in jurisprudence), there is nothing like right or wrong in law, it is just a matter of legal or illegal. 

With parochial eyes every judgement is analyzed post, but considering the situations prevailing was it the best choice, then it is okay to have such a system. And with options to appeal to higher courts, it is always possible whether in Jury based system or a single judge based system. 

We are seeing the issues with the Jury based system panning out in Ferguson, but saying they are biased just because the jury was predominantly not coloured! well then we can interpret in many ways that if the jury is predominantly Afro then the white man will not get justice, if the defendant is Hispanic, he would have issues because the jury is Hispanophobic. 

At least in India we are still not having too many issues saying, hey this Tamil Judge was being too harsh because the defendant is from Punjab!!! Lucky us, that it is "STILL" not happening. The problem is the trial by the media. does the media go by the gag orders issued by the courts? Are we not biased of the way we hear things from the media, if that is the case , is it not possible to incarcerate somebody based on such unfounded euphoria from the media? 

The point of fact is the questioner asked what is a better system or do we need to change, well looks like it is not an option. Think about all the other problems of he system. 

Do background checks on the Jurors 
Ensure that these guys are compensated for the time lost sitting in the Jury panel? 
What would be selection criteria for the Jury and what are the systems and checks we would have to do it 
What to do if the Juror does not turn up? Is a 5 person bench okay instead of a 6 member bench? 

Already we have a system that is over burdened and have lack of Judges, US is a litigation friendly country, and there are more per capita lawyers and judges (They are elected and have party affiliations!!!!) At least it is not that blatant in India.