Jury duty is a wonderful thing
St Dude - I have to disagree with your assertion that "(y)ours is the best in the world". I assume you are referring specifically to your jury system rather than the wider legal system.
The jury system here is merely a money making machine for attorneys and municipalities. The principle of a jury trial is that the defendant is tried by a jury of his/her peers not by 12 people deemed to be the most likely to vote in a particular direction as determined by voire dire. If you have a couple of million to throw at a great attorney then good for you. If you're a regular Joe accused of something heinous and saddled with a public defender vs a gung ho DA all I can say is good luck. The odds are already against you and the chances the PD's office are going to do much research into the jury pool are, I imagine, slim at best.
In England 14 people are selected for duty at each trial. It is random and is truly a jury of your peers (12 regular plus 2 alternates). The attorneys involved have absolutely no say in the matter. Being excused from jury duty is almost unheard of.
I was talking about the wider legal system. I do think we have the best in the world. England has a fair system as well, much of ours is based on their laws.
If we are talking about criminal juries, the odds are stacked against the defendant, but not for the reasons you say. The odds are stacked because 95% or more of criminal defendants who actually go to trial are guilty. That's the real world.
The idea that prosecutors are better than public defenders is not true as a general rule. I was chief homicide prosecutor in New Orleans at the age of 30 making less than 30k a year. Most public defenders I tried cases against were older and more experienced. Most were very good attorneys.
I have since chaired an indigent defender board. The public defenders that worked for us were every bit as good as the prosecutors. The prosecutors were paid a bit more, but both sides were severely underpaid compared to what private sector attorneys get paid.
I also found that more than most public defenders were passionate about their work. The reason I usually won my murder trials is not because I was better than the another atty, early on the opposite was true. I tried cases against older and more experienced attys regularly. The reason I usually won is I had the facts and juries are not stupid. I got outlawyered regularly, but still won all my murder trials because I juries don't vote for the best lawyer, people need to give them more credit. If you are being tried for murder it is because a grand jury has found probable cause. Most of my murder cases were actually easy cases to try. Most criminals are not evil masterminds like on tv, they are knuckleheads who act on impulse.
High publicity cases distort the day to day reality of what happens with juries. Juries take their duty very, very seriously. They have no interest in sending an innocent man to jail or letting a guilty man go. The make mistakes, but in my humble opinion, they get it right 90% of the time or better.