There are problems, they could be fixed or they could get worse. But your attitude that you don't want to be bothered will kill the system if enough people adopt it.
You simply do NOT want ignorant and uneducated people on welfare doing a half-@$$ed job of deciding cases, just because you think they ought to do something for their money. They'll do a rotten job at that just like they do everything else - and when they decide multi-million dollar business cases by socking it to the 'evil rich', what do you suppose is going to happen to businesses and the economy? Right now those 'runaway jury' cases are pretty rare and only happen in high-profile cases, but once layabouts who can't even hold a job are the jurors, every case will be a runaway. Even if you don't happen to be on the losing end of a frivolous suit (and those will multiply as soon as the unscrupulous realize that ignorant jurors are handing out free money), the sinking economy will sink you too.
The whole purpose of the legal system on the civil side is to avoid self-help repossession, theft, and violence. When people can't get their disputes resolved in a just and honest manner, we'll be back to pistols at dawn and might makes right. I don't want to go there.
The idea that trial day will push folks to settle is another point. The dynamics of settlement are funny, you have to have the hammer before you can get it done. It's not the lawyers, it's the clients. Nobody wants to settle until they have to -- not the defendants who don't want to write the check, and not the plaintiffs who think they can wrangle another couple thousand out of the defendants.
Mediation is one attempt to avoid last-minute settlements, but it hasn't worked out the way everybody hoped because it isn't binding.
You don't have to be in the courtroom to be useful. You are 'cushion' or 'insurance' against folks who don't show up. And sometimes we have to do things that are boring or unpleasant just because it's our civic duty. I always found that taking my own books, a comfortable stadium seat to put in the wooden chair, some music with earphones and a little easy work from my job, kept me fully occupied in the days before laptops and iPads and wireless service in the jury assembly room. Now, of course, I just FReep.
Sorry but you’re just plain wrong. The system is broken, it punishes the people who want to participate in our government by voting by forcing them to waste days in bad rooms not being on juries. The biggest problem is that there’s only about a 10% chance, so if there’s a 6 person jury that means 54 people wasted their day not being picked. THAT is a BROKEN system.
How the hell do they know if the jury members not being picked aren’t intelligent, most of them never get voir dired. Then of course there’s the classic joke, the people on the jury are the ones who couldn’t find a way to get out of jury duty just how smart can they really be. It’s funny because it’s true.
All your “proof” that it’s not broken revolves around the people that actually get to serve, which ignores why it is so obviously broken: most people will NEVER serve no matter how many times they show. Running the averages you’ve got to show up 10 times to get picked once. BROKEN. Actually your “proof” helps show that it’s broken, because if you’re good enough to be a “smart” juror then you should have been picked all ten times, but you weren’t, you never will be. The system fails. They call in too many people too often which results in people mostly doing nothing. I’d love to actually serve on a jury, but I won’t, my half a dozen trips down to never even get in a court room proved that, which is why I won’t go anymore. I’m done wasting MY time for YOUR broken system that doesn’t work. They should NEVER call in more than twice as many people as they need, ever. Instead they call in 10 times as many as they need every single day.