Another interesting idea would be to have professional jurors, people that are paid by the state to sit on juries and who are expected to have the necessary basic understanding of the law and any background information, such as the fiduciary understanding in the Martha Stewart case. I would hate to be tried by a jury of my peers, mostly because none of them would actually be my peers. If I somehow became implicated in a crime possibly involving a long trial, I know that the people I wanted on my jury, intelligent professionals with a certain amount of rational and logical skills, would do almost anything to avoid the trial if they knew ahead of time that it would be a long one. Instead, I would get people who had other motives for sitting on a long trial, be it avoiding a crappy job, escape from a miserable life, or just plain old fame and fortune. This is not a good way to run a judicial system, it seems to me.

I don't expect this to change in the near future but as our judical system and crimes continues to become more and more complex, a change in how we select and reward our juries will become paramount. Eventually, we will have to come to the understanding that juries, whether they are made up of our peers or professional jurors, have to be not only compensated, but just not punished for sitting on jury duty. It should be task of great importance and be viewed as such.
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