Dispassionate juror

A friend of mine was particularly disturbed by this gruesome murder that happened near New Haven, Connecticut:

The men put him and his family through an ordeal of beatings and sexual abuse that ended as flames tore through the house where the girls, still alive, had been strapped to their beds. Their mother had already been strangled.

Only the father — Dr. William A. Petit Jr., dazed and bloodied after being beaten with a baseball bat in his sleep — managed to escape.

The jury just voted for the death penalty for one of the murderers.

When I was reading the article, I was looking for signs of sociopathy, which I didn't see. Instead I read this sentence, "For nearly two months, jurors learned every searing detail of the night and morning in July 2007," and started thinking about how much counseling these jurors are going to need.

The concept of having lay jurors as part of a legal system is an interesting one. They are supposed to be dispassionate -- coldly and rationally interpreting the facts that are presented to them. Eventually they must come to a decision, perhaps about whether someone lives or dies, and be able to live with that decision themselves.

I started thinking, sociopaths would be great at this. Sociopaths would be so good at this, in fact, that I wonder why no one has thought of an all sociopath jury before. It's like getting someone who has lost their sense of smell to take out the trash, am I right? Someone has to do the enforcing, why not have it be someone who is naturally good at it, and even likes it? I'm going to add "jury duty" to the list of reasons why societies with sociopaths have an advantage over those without.