Instead, for most of the postwar period, criminal trials have been decided by professional judges, who are notorious for convicting over 99 percent of defendants. By contrast, the prewar jury system acquitted in about 17 percent of cases (though judges could order a new jury trial if they considered a verdict inappropriate). This stark discrepancy is one of the reasons why a small but dedicated group of activists such as Isa wants to revive the jury system.

To Isa, the system of lay judges that started hearing trials in 2009 is nothing like a jury. Under this system, randomly selected citizens with no legal expertise (“lay judges”) and professional judges hear and make decisions about culpability and punishment in trials involving serious offenses such as murder. This may sound a lot like what a jury does, but there is a huge difference between a system in which judges and laypeople decide a case together and one in which the laypeople act alone.