Doing the kinds of law I worked on, we rarely if ever had jury trials — mostly just the Judge. And I have not experienced the reduction or expansion of penalties that you describe, except perhaps in the environmental cases and job discrimination cases, where the Judge ruled way beyond (or below) our hoped expectations. In both instances, it didn’t matter in the end, as the powers-that-be just changed their practices and got around the ruling and did whatever they wanted to do. Very frustrating.