Not everyone wants to do it. Up to them if you ask me, why force people into it, when there are people that don't mind.
The idea is that we are judged by our peers who should be a collection of people from any part of society. If it were restricted to just those people who wanted to do it then you might end up being tried by only some parts of society. e.g. most employed people would be told by their employer to refuse to do it. You would then find most jury's made up of retired people, people without a job, etc. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that but it would limit it to certain groups of people.
Exactly my thinking something so important you'd want people there that are going to take it seriously not just vote to hurry it up.
I had something a bit similar in mine. It was a bar fight where a guy came out of the toilets to find a massive fight already started. It was peaceful when he went in but when he came out it was like a comedy scene out of a western film, with glasses and chairs flying everywhere. He tried to break up the fight but got attacked and started defending himself. He was a big guy so floored everyone who attacked him. But you could see on CCTV that he was actually showing a lot of restraint and only defending himself. Several of the jurors had decided his guilt as soon as we retired to the jurors room because there is no doubt he'd hit people. They just wanted to declare him guilty and go home early. But several felt quite strongly that his actions were justified so wouldn't let it go. I felt it our duty to really review and discuss what we thought rather than make our lives easy with a quick answer.
Do you not get in trouble if you just don't go or ignore them.
Yes, yes you do.
This is really dumb advice.
