User:R.H./Judge and jury

The gist:


 * 1) One form of punishment: jail time
 * 2) Two bodies: judge and jury
 * 3) Judge decides on jail time without telling the jury. Jury votes on jail time via median rating without telling the judge.
 * 4) The defendant gets the lower punishment of the two.
 * 5) The judge gets a rating based on higher sentence - lower sentence = absolute margin. What percentage of the jury sentence is the absolute margin? The higher the worse the judge is. The ratings of a judge's different cases are summed to mean ratings.
 * 6) The judges with the best ratings within a certain time span ascend to some special court thingie which decides on whether elected politicans in single winner districts broke their promises in a grossly negligent way. If a majority of the special court thingie thinks this is the case with some single winner district politician there is a new election in that destrict. New elections don't interfere with the dates set for the normal elections.

Additional stuff: There should be no minimum sentences, because this would mean the judicial branch has only as much power as the legislative branch grants.

It should be allowed for jury members to abstain from voting which would not be interpreted in any way in favor or against the defendant. If the remaining voters are an even number, take the lower number of the two at the median as the jury sentence.

As for the special court thingie announcing new elections, there are no special rules in these elections that somehow discriminate the incumbent. There should be no limits to how often an incumbent can be elected again. The only discrimination is that with more frequent elections it is more likely for the incumbent to be voted out.

How can this be extended to punishment combinations? What I don't know for sure is how to modify point 3 (how the jury decides on the punishment). Maybe like this: Imagine exactly 2 forms of punishment existed: jail time (we pretend all jails have the same quality) and social work (again we pretend there is only one kind of social work). First the jury decides via median on jail time as if no other punishment existed. Then the jury decides via median on social work time as if no other punishment existed. This will give a conversion rate. Then the jury decides (again via median) how much of the jail time they want to convert into social work.

I know what to do with point 4 and point 5: The defendant choses one of the 2 punishment combos. The jury gets to see the decision by the judge and rates the judge using the median.

Simpler punishment combination variant: The judge announce the punishment combination. The jury then decides to keep or raise or lower ALL parts of the punishment by the same percentage through use of median rating. The defendant gets the lower sentence. The judge gets automaically a rating like in the version with only one kind of sentence.