This is pretty much how the jury system works for every trial (not just this one). The jury are not experts on interpreting evidence which will always require some degree of scientific knowledge. They just have to count on expert witness testimony (which both sides may have). Anyone called up for jury duty who has expertise in the area is unlikely to be selected to sit on the jury.
Consider a vim vs emacs trial. Assuming there is something like an objective truth, would you believe a jury of HN readers would be more or less likely to find it compared to random people given competing presentations trying to convince them?
(I’m actually not completely sure of the right answer)
There’s also a reasoning from democracy: you want the general public to be involved to represent something closer to prevalent moral views than what a caste of specialists may come up within their isolated community.
There may even be something of trade off where you’re sometimes ok with arriving at a verdict that is objectively wrong according to experts, but feels intuitively right to the public. This is dicey, and probably shouldn’t apply to criminal trials. But trust in the justice system is a value in and of itself.
I imagine the problem is that the other jurors would probably listen to the expert juror and trust and believe them more than they should. In effect, you end up with a one-person jury. Whatever the expert juror's opinion is, the rest will follow and endorse.
