peer review vs. our criminal justice system

A nice observation from John Pepple's letter to the editor of First Things:

The belief held by those who are left of center that peer review is always reliable runs up against other leftist beliefs. One is that the criminal-justice system is not reliable. Our criminal-justice system is open (for the most part) to public scrutiny and includes many checks and balances, including the use of a judge, a jury, and defense attorneys, and a procedure for appealing any decision to a higher court. Peer review, by contrast, is closed to public scrutiny and has no checks and balances. Any rational person who is skeptical of our criminal-justice system ought to be even more skeptical of peer review.