Quotes & Sayings About Juries

Emotions are reserved for juries and, in that case, a good lawyer can really lay them on when the time is right, better than the best Academy Award winning actor — Kenneth Eade

While in the Florida legislature, I strongly opposed the Stand Your Ground law because I believed it would provide defenses to people who had created the scenarios they sought protection from. Or it would leave juries without the proper rules of engagement that ought govern predictable human interactions. — Dan Gelber

What many of those who oppose the use of juries in civil trials seem to ignore is that the founders of our Nation considered the right of trial by jury in civil cases an important bulwark against tyranny and corruption, a safeguard too precious to be left to the whim of the sovereign, or, it might be added, to that of the judiciary. — William Rehnquist

[It is] a historic step toward eliminating the shameful practice of racial discrimination in the selection of juries. — Thurgood Marshall

Interviews, and hence interviewers, are there to help shed light, and to let viewers judge for themselves. We are not judges, juries, commentators or torturers - nor friends, either. — Andrew Marr

I stopped trying to figure out American juries around the same time Adam Sandler movies started raking in millions at the box office
people just don't act predictably. — Jodi Picoult

Jews can't serve on juries because they insist they're guilty. — Cathy Ladman

[When asked: "If women voted, would they not have to sit on juries?":] Many women would be glad of a chance to sit on anything. There are women who stand up and wash six days in the week at 75 cents a day who would like to take a vacation and sit on a jury at $1.50. — Anna Howard Shaw

( ... ) juries should ask not "Is he guilty?" but rather "Is he dangerous? — Julian Barnes

So defendants like Walter McMillian, even in counties that were 40 or 50 percent black, frequently found themselves staring at all-white juries, especially in death penalty cases. Then, in 1986, the Supreme Court ruled in Batson v. Kentucky that prosecutors could be challenged more directly about using peremptory strikes in a racially discriminatory manner, giving hope to black defendants - and forcing prosecutors to find more creative ways to exclude black jurors. — Bryan Stevenson

Sometimes you had a better shot with a jury, that body of ones "peers" who make decisions with their emotional brains; especially if your client was guilty. — Kenneth Eade

If I had killed somebody, it wouldn't have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But f-ing, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to f- young girls. Juries want to f- young girls. Everyone wants to f- young girls! — Roman Polanski

There has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the power and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what is the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their power, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and find all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws. — Lysander Spooner

I don't like juries having the wool pulled over their eyes. I don't think that's what the Constitution is about. — Nancy Grace

The House adjourned without voting on the bill, but the following year a similar bill - mandating equality in hotels and restaurants open to the public, in transportation facilities, in theaters and other public amusements and in the selection of juries - passed both chambers. The measure reached the White House about the time the two sides in Louisiana cobbled a compromise that allowed Grant to withdraw Sheridan and most of the federal troops. On March 1, 1875, the president signed the Civil Rights Act, the most ambitious affirmation of racial equality in American history until then (a distinction it would retain until the 1960s). — H.W. Brands

Yeah, I lost court cases and misdemeanor juries, but of felony jury trials I was successful 105 of 106 times. — Vincent Bugliosi

I have had it with people who are threatening me and my kids and my family over simply commenting on the law and criminal procedure, and respecting juries. Because they do work hard. They work way harder than I do; and they work way harder than the rest of those people making those peanut gallery comments. — Ashleigh Banfield

The idea of hereditary legislators is as inconsistent as that of hereditary judges, or hereditary juries; and as absurd as an hereditary mathematician, or an hereditary wise man; and as ridiculous as an hereditary poet-laureat. — Thomas Paine

Religious people today are courts and juries. When it comes down to it, Jesus died on the cross so that we could learn to love others like we love ourselves, not judge them or persecute them. — Tammy Faye Bakker

By a declaration of rights, I mean one which shall stipulate freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of commerce against monopolies, trial by juries in all cases, no suspensions of the habeas corpus, no standing armies. These are fetters against doing evil which no honest government should decline. — Thomas Jefferson

I proved him a liar but John made him look like a fool. All the time Ewell was on the stand I couldn't dare look at John and keep a straight face. John looked at him as if he were a three-legged chicken or a square egg. Don't tell me judges don't try to prejudice juries. — Harper Lee

Same reason why young women on juries are not a good idea, they don't get it. They're not in that same life experience of paying the bills, doing the mortgage, kids, community, crime, education and health care. They're like healthy and hot and running around without a care in the world ... I just think, excuse them, so they can go back on Tinder and Match. — Kimberly Guilfoyle

It is apparent, if you go back through our history, that the grand juries of the criminal justice system do not value black lives. — William Lacy Clay Jr.

Juries must, of necessity, be governed, in reaching many results through inferences from other facts, by certain laws of nature and human reason. They are often obliged to infer one thing from another, and this, whether that other be a fact direct or circumstantial. — Levi Woodbury

Despite the generous rewards that state juries dole out, in many cases, victims receive less than 50 cents on the dollar in settlements with the lawyers taking the rest. This is not justice. — Pat Roberts

Putting pressure on grand juries to indict in my view is un-American. A grand jury should be allowed to be fair and impartial. They shouldn't have people yelling and screaming. — Rudy Giuliani

All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over Lestrade's facts. — Arthur Conan Doyle

You never know with juries. I'd take a judge every time, unless of course I was guilty. — Kenneth Eade

So street-level FBI agents turned secrets into information, and senior FBI leaders brought that information to reporters, to prosecutors, to federal grand juries, and into the public realm. That was the beginning of the end of Richard Nixon's presidency. Without the FBI, the reporters would have been lost. — Tim Weiner

Believe it or not, there are people who want to be on juries. — Nancy Grace

Any test that turns on what is offensive to the communitys standards is too loose, too capricious, too destructive of freedom of expression to be squared with the First Amendment. Under that test, juries can censor, suppress, and punish what they dont like, provided the matter relates to sexual impurity or has a tendency to excite lustful thoughts. This is community censorship in one of its worst forms. It creates a regime where in the battle between the literati and the Philistines, the Philistines are certain to win. — William O. Douglas

'The Sisters Brothers' has endeared so many prize juries because the Western format has more of a broad appeal and is familiar to readers. — Patrick DeWitt

Had the jury convicted on proper instructions it would be the end of the matter. But juries are not bound by what seems inescapable logic to judges. — Robert H. Jackson

I'm not going to fit into that English courtroom. I'm going to stand out, with how I dress, and how I think, because I'm not English. I don't know about murder and witness and juries, but I do know how to fix things in my life when they're messed up. If you make a mistake and repent, you're forgiven. You're welcomed back. If you lie, and keep lying, there won't be a place for you. -Katie, Plain Truth — Jodi Picoult

Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas. — Lewis F. Powell Jr.

Authoritative interpretations of the First Amendment guarantees have consistently refused to recognize an exception for any test of truth whether administered by judges, juries, or administrative officials and especially one that puts the burden of proving truth on the speaker. — William J. Brennan

There are some who think that the government is limited in how many corruption cases it can bring against Wall Street, because juries can't understand the complexity of the financial schemes involved. But in 'U.S.A. v. Carollo,' that turned out not to be true. — Matt Taibbi

'CSI' has not only remained a top-rated show through seven seasons; it has had real-world consequences. Police and prosecutors complain of a 'CSI' effect' that leads juries to demand more physical evidence than they used to expect. College officials use the same term to describe spiking enrollment in forensic-science programs. — Virginia Postrel

In our system, grand juries take every charge, every lie, and they try to sort the truth from the lies, and then they move forward into the system. And that's how the system ought to work. We should respect the secrecy of the grand jury so they can sort through what's true and what's not. And someone is leaking, and if they are leaking from the grand jury investigation, then that's a violation of the law. — Paul Begala

I'm trying to read more dead people because I keep having to read stuff for juries and so forth. — Rick Moody

The kind of evidence that was put before the jurors led to less-than-rational decision-making. I think that juries are composed of good people who can be misled. — Kenneth C. Frazier

The law is logical and is based on common sense. The trick was to argue the law in favor of your particular point of view without sounding biased. It was kind of like a magic trick: the best illusionist being the one who can best manipulate the logic to his or her advantage, all the while giving the illusion of impartiality. — Kenneth Eade

If we believe in our current penal process, then the penalties imposed by judges and juries should be the only sanctions for one's crime, not the invisible sanctions of the legislature. — Charles B. Rangel

The Court had repeatedly made clear, though, that the Constitution does not require that racial minorities and women actually serve on juries - it only forbids excluding jurors on the basis of race or gender. For many African Americans, the use of wholly discretionary peremptory strikes to select a jury of twelve remained a serious barrier to serving on a jury. — Bryan Stevenson

Women should not be allowed on juries where the accused is a stud. — Rush Limbaugh

From childhood on, I did sit in the courtroom watching my father argue cases and talk to juries. — Harper Lee

I've served on five different juries, and many of them were bonkers in their own way. — Simon Hoggart

I hated cracking the whip, and these juries turn into political things. — Patricia Highsmith

It is left ... to the juries, if they think the permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this power but when they suspect partiality in the judges; and by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of English liberty. — Thomas Jefferson

From "Not For Ourselves Alone:"
In Elizabeth Cady Stanton's time:
Women were barred by custom from the pulpit and professions
Those who spoke in public were thought indecent
Married women were prohibited from owning or inheriting property: in fact, wives were the property of their husbands, who were entitled by law to her wages and her body.
Women were prohibited from signing contracts
Women had no right to their children or even their clothing in a divorce
Women were not allowed to serve on juries and most were considered incompetent to testify.
Women were not allowed to VOTE. — Ken Burns

The only real lawyers are trial lawyers, and trial lawyers try cases to juries. — Clarence Darrow

Which is probably one of the reasons those of us who love contemporary fiction love it as we do. We're alone with it. It arrives without references, without credentials we can trust. Givers of prizes (not to mention critics) do the best they can, but they may - they probably will - be scoffed at by their children's children. We, the living readers, whether or not we're members of juries, decide, all on our own, if we suspect ourselves to be in the presence of greatness. We're compelled to let future generations make the more final decisions, which will, in all likelihood, seem to them so clear as to produce a sense of bafflement over what was valued by their ancestors; what was garlanded and paraded, what carried to the temple on the shoulders of the wise. — Michael Cunningham

Lawyers have been known to wrest from reluctant juries triumphant verdicts of acquittal for their clients, even when those clients, as often happens, were clearly and unmistakably innocent. — Oscar Wilde

Now they will go back to their lives. Some will curse us, some will look forward to serve, and others will look to us for entertainment. We will not disappoint any of them, Brent. They don't need us, but we surely need them. — Kenneth Eade

When the link between the use of unsafe, mercury-laden vaccine and autism, ADHD, asthma, allergies and diabetes becomes undeniable, mainstream medicine will be sporting a huge, self-inflicted and well-deserved black eye. Then will come the billion-dollar awards, by enraged juries, to the children and their families. I can't wait. — Bernard Rimland

The juries are our judges of all fact, and of law when they choose it. — Thomas Jefferson

Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of person under protection of habeas corpus; and trial by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. — Thomas Jefferson

We generally get the juries we deserve. — Harper Lee

To vest a few fallible men - prosecutors, judges, jurors - with vast powers of literary or artistic censorship, to convert them into what J.S. Mill called the "moral police" is to make them despotic arbiters of literary products ... If one day they ban mediocre books as obscene, another day they may do otherwise to a work of a genius. Originality, not too plentiful, should be cherished, not stifled. An author's imagination may be cramped if he must write with an eye on prosecutors or juries ... — Jerome Frank

Even though the Judge would charge the jury that they should listen to all the evidence before they made up their minds, the chances were likely that 100% of them will have already decided if William was guilty or not before the trial was over. — Kenneth Eade

If the author of the Declaration of Independence were to utter such a sentiment today, the Post Office Department could exclude him from the mail, grand juries could indict him for sedition and criminal syndicalism, legislative committees could seize his private papers and United States Senators would be clamoring for his deportation that he should be sent back to live with the rest of the terrorists. — Frank I. Cobb

Black jurors sit on juries every day and convict black people every day. — Johnnie Cochran

Juries are not computers. They are composed of human beings who evaluate evidence differently. — Alan Dershowitz

It was ridiculous to think that twelve people could turn off' all their biases and prejudices and make a logical decision based on the evidence they were allowed to hear in the trial. — Kenneth Eade

We trust people's lives to randomly selected juries as the only fair method; should we use any less fair method for a nation or a planet? — Peter J. Carroll

I am sure from my experience of juries that, in a criminal case especially, they will obey the law as declared by the Judge; they will take the law from the Judge, whether they like it or do not like it, and apply it honestly to the facts before them. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

But for their right to judge of the law, and the justice of the law, juries would be no protection to an accused person, even as to matters of fact; for, if the government can dictate to a jury any law whatever, in a criminal case, it can certainly dictate to them the laws of evidence. — Lysander Spooner

In his day news could not travel fast, and hence he could easily find a jury of honest, intelligent men who had not heard of the case they were called to try - but in our day of telegraphs and newspapers his plan compels us to swear in juries composed of fools and rascals, because the system rigidly excludes honest men and men of brains. — Mark Twain

In 1985, in Batson v. Kentucky, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits prosecutors from discriminating on the basis of race when selecting juries, a ruling hailed as an important safeguard against all-white juries locking up African Americans based on racial biases and stereotypes. — Michelle Alexander

As a private person, I have a passion for landscape, and I have never seen one improved by a billboard. Where every prospect pleases, man is at his vilest when he erects a billboard. When I retire from Madison Avenue, I am going to start a secret society of masked vigilantes who will travel around the world on silent motor bicycles, chopping down posters at the dark of the moon. How many juries will convict us when we are caught in these acts of beneficent citizenship? — David Ogilvy

I felt grand juries were illegal and coercive. — Bernadine Dohrn

Drink a health to the wonders of the western world, the pirates, preachers, poteen-makers, with the jobbing jockies; parching peelers, and the juries fill their stomachs selling judgments of the English law. — John Millington Synge

When I'm walking around, I'm sometimes just perplexed at people who seem like everyday people, people who are on juries, who are in the police force, who are in control of my life in many ways. — Parul Sehgal

I pretended I had urgent business at the prosecutor's table which, in one of The System's obvious tells, was always millimeters from the jury box. — Sergio De La Pava

Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we're just gambling on probabilities. We may be wrong. We may be trying to return a guilty man to the community. No one can really know. But we have a reasonable doubt, and this is a safeguard that has enormous value in our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it's sure. We nine can't understand how you three are still so sure. Maybe you can tell us. — Reginald Rose

Studying the rule of law won't make a great litigator. It is the act of trying cases in real courtrooms with real plaintiffs and defendants and judges and juries, week after week and year after year that develops lawyers into top trial attorneys. — Marian Deegan

It has long been noticed that juries are pitiless for robbery and full of indulgence for infanticide. A question of interest, my dear Sir! The jury is afraid of being robbed and has passed the age when it could be a victim of infanticide. — Edmond Francois Valentin About

Your uncle Howard is one of the most harmless of men - much nicer than most professional people. Of course he does dreadful things as a judge; but then if you take a man and pay him 5,000 pounds a year to be wicked, and praise him for it, and have policemen and courts and laws and juries to drive him into it so that he can't help doing it, what can you expect? — George Bernard Shaw

Have you ever heard that old joke about juries? Do you really want to be judged by twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty? Yes-that's exactly who you want judging you. Because juries are people unfamiliar with the letter of the law. And those are people who can be swayed-by lots of elements that have absolutely nothing to do with facts. — Emma Chase

The pernicious influence of the prize and medal giving in art is so great that it should be stopped. History proves that juries in art have been generally wrong. — Robert Henri

but racism is about the power of a group and in America it's white folks who have that power. How? Well, white folks don't get treated like shit in upper-class African-American communities and white folks don't get denied bank loans or mortgages precisely because they are white and black juries don't give white criminals worse sentences than black criminals for the same crime and black police officers don't stop white folk for driving while white and black companies don't choose not to hire somebody because their name sounds white and black teachers don't tell white kids that they're not smart enough to be doctors and black politicians don't try some tricks to reduce the voting power of white folks through gerrymandering and advertising agencies don't say they can't use white models to advertise glamorous products because they are not considered "aspirational" by the "mainstream." So — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Those who serve upon our juries have maintained a standard of fairness and excellence and demonstrated a vision toward the administration of justice that is a wellspring of inspiration. — Earl Warren

As a defense lawyer, he refused to condemn his clients. Everyone else in the system
the cops, the prosecutors, the juries and judges
would take care of that; they didn't need his help. — Scott Turow