Jury Trials Quotes & Sayings

I believed there was enough evidence to go to trial. Grand jury said there wasn't. Okay, fine. Do I have a right to disagree with the grand jury? Many Americans believe O.J. Simpson was guilty. A jury said he wasn't. So I have as much right to question a jury as they do. Does it make somebody a racist? No! They just disagreed with the jury. So did I. — Al Sharpton

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

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

Trial by jury is the palladium of our liberties. I do not know what a palladium is, but I am sure it is a good thing! — Mark Twain

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

The idea that trials are a search for the truth is just a myth. Trials are a search for that which the jury will believe is the truth. — David Rosenfelt

Trial by jury in civil causes, ... trial by jury in criminal causes, [and] the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus ... all stand on the same footing; they are the common rights of Americans. — Richard Henry Lee

The most important moments in a trial are often not seen by a jury. That is because it's one of the judge's main responsibilities to screen what they see and hear, lest they be prejudiced. It's the "you can't unring a bell" theory; once the jury hears something they shouldn't have heard, th trial is forever tainted.
If the damage is great enough, a mistrial is the result. Judges basically prefer nuclear war to mistrials. — David Rosenfelt

The Federal Building's large Ceremonial Courtroom, reserved for show trials, is veneered in executive teak. Bench, counsel tables, jury boxes, entrances, and exits
all are as formally arranged as an Elizabethan stage. Only the drama is shapeless, at least to those of us who have never seen a trial before. We see only random movements, sequences, comings and goings, no form or agenda apparent. To us the action is less like watching a play than watching an aquarium. — Shana Alexander

If rowing is a trial then the ergometer is the courtroom, the meter is the jury. And an honest jury at that, because the numbers do not lie. — Barry S. Strauss

There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial:
both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to
talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him
during the trial. — David Letterman

Jury trials are really nothing more than poorly written stage plays. You've got two authors writing opposing narratives and a director who is paid not to care about either outcome. Hired actors sit on either end of the stage, while unwitting audience members strive to remain quiet. No applause should be rendered, no gasps of glory. Witnesses sit agape with fury as they stumble across their rehearsed lines. If only they had practiced just once more. If only they had more time or a dress rehearsal, then they would recite their packaged words with such eloquent delivery that the critics in the jury box would believe only them. — Elizabeth L. Silver

Most jury trials are contests between the rich and poor. — Clarence Darrow

Trial by jury must be preserved. It is the best system ever invented for a free people in the world's history. — John Henry Wigmore

Let the people have property and they will have power - a power that will forever be exerted to prevent the restriction of the press, the abolition of trial by jury, or the abridgment of any other privilege. — Noah Webster

I've resisted pronouncing a sentence before guilt is found. I still have this old-fashioned notion that even with people like Osama, who is very likely to be found guilty, we should do our best not to, in positions of executive power, not to prejudge jury trials. — Howard Dean

We still have real jury trials, honest judges, and free elections, all the superficial characteristics of a functional, free democracy. But underneath that surface is a florid and malevolent bureaucracy that mostly (not absolutely, but mostly) keeps the rich and the poor separate through thousands of tiny, scarcely visible inequities. — Matt Taibbi

An optimist is somebody who thinks our various political and social systems, schools and churches, support groups and Boy Scout troops, jury trials and congressional committees, are on the up-and-up. That they are intended for the benefit of the members. The reality is that they are designed to keep everyone in line. — Jack McDevitt

The grand solid merit of jury trial is that the jurors ... are selected at the last moment from the multitude of citizens. They cannot be known beforehand, and they melt back into the multitiude after each trial. — John Henry Wigmore

Trial by jury is a wise distribution of power which exceeds all other modes of trial. — Edward Coke

Trial by jury is part of the bright constellation which leads to peace, liberty and safety. — Thomas Jefferson

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer. — Robert Frost

There was not a member of the Constitutional Convention who had the least objection to what is contended for by the advocates for a Bill of Rights and trial by jury. — George Washington

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

Only a very foolish lawyer will dare guess the outcome of a jury trial. — Jerome Frank

I will now add what I do not like. First, the omission of a bill of rights providing clearly and without the aid of sophisms for freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection against standing armies, restriction against monopolies, the eternal and unremitting force of the habeas corpus laws, and trials by jury in all matters of fact triable by the laws of the land and not by the law of nations. — Thomas Jefferson

That in controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other, and ought to be held sacred. — George Mason

I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution. I think that it is high time that we remembered that the Constitution, as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation. — Margaret Chase Smith

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

The trial of Jesus of Nazareth, the trial and rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, any one of the witchcraft trials in Salem during 1691, the Moscow trials of 1937 during which Stalin destroyed all of the founders of the 1924 Soviet REvolution, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial of 1920 through 1927- there are many trials such as these in which the victim was already condemned to death before the trial took place, and it took place only to cover up the real meaning: the accused was to be put to death. These are trials in which the judge, the counsel, the jury, and the witnesses are the criminals, not the accused. For any believer in capital punishment, the fear of an honest mistake on the part of all concerned is cited as the main argument against the final terrible decision to carry out the death sentence. There is the frightful possibility in all such trials as these that the judgement has already been pronounced and the trial is just a mask for murder. — Katherine Anne Porter

We cannot be judge and jury, the hardest thing is to understand the unknown and in knowing the hidden all things are revealed giving truth.
God is watcher during all moments and at the end the real Judge. — Zarina Bibi

A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government. — Byron White

The object of any tyrant would be to overthrow or diminish trial by jury, for it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives. — Patrick Devlin, Baron Devlin

Trial by jury must and shall be preserved! Amidst the throng of crude sacrilegisms ... that assail us nowadays in the legal sanctuary, none is more shortsighted, none more dangerous, than the proposal to abolish trial by jury. — John Henry Wigmore

It is the duty of the Judge in criminal trials to take care that the verdict of the jury is not founded upon any evidence except that which the law allows. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In 2004, the FDA urged drug companies to adopt a 'Don't ask, don't tell' policy with respect to their clinical-trial data showing that antidepressants are not better than placebos for depressed children. If the data were made public, they cautioned, it might lead doctors to not prescribe antidepressants. The FDA believed that the jury was still out on antidepressants for children. Even if the clinical trials show negative results, an FDA spokesperson was reported to have said to a Washington Post reporter, it doesn't mean that the drugs are ineffective. The assumption seems to have been that doctors should prescribe medications that have not been shown to work, until it has been proven that they don't work. — Irving Kirsch

Loyalty is that for the lack of which your gang will shoot you without benefit of trial by jury. — Robert Frost

The corporations don't like open courts of law, trials by jury. They want to privatize by pushing people into compulsory arbitration where they win most of the time and the whole process is pretty secret. — Ralph Nader

Earlier today, the jury at the Martha Stewart trial reached a verdict. Martha was found guilty on all charges. In a related story, there's a huge sale at K-Mart. — Conan O'Brien