Murder Trial Quotes & Sayings

Almost any object, including this book you hold, can turn up as Exhibit A in a murder trial. — Tom Robbins

Now calm down, missus," Mr. Hogan said with gentle firmness. "You know you shouldn't have read that paper. Just like yer husband said, it got ye all upset."
"My husband is on trial for murder," Elizabeth argued desperately.
"Yer husband is down at the port, seein' 'bout a ship to take ye off explorin' the world."
"No, that is my brother."
"He were yer husband this afternoon," Mr. Hogan reminded her.
"He was never my husband, he was always my brother," Elizabeth insisted. "My husband-my real husband is on trial for murdering me."
"Missus," he said gently, "you ain't dead."
"Oh, my God!" Elizabeth said in a low, explosive voice as she raked her hair off her forehead, trying to think what to do, how to convince them to have Mr. Hogan take her down the coast. — Judith McNaught

When they reached Fairhaven, Jubal rushed out to collect her. "I knew you shouldn't have gone to that ole trial, Miss Emma," fussed Jubal. "I tried to tell Mr. Steven that. You's makin' a baby, you can't go gallivantin' all over the parish - " Emma might have smiled if her husband hadn't been accused of a murder he didn't commit. As it was, she just let Jubal prattle. She — Linda Lael Miller

A joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial. — Mark Twain

Who on earth but Poirot would have thought of a trial for murder as a restorer of conjugal happiness! — Agatha Christie

All persons harboring or secreting the conspirators or aiding their concealment or escape, will be treated as accomplices in the murder of the President and shall be subject to trial before a military commission, and the punishment of death. — Edwin M. Stanton

In Eumenides, Apollo, chosen to represent Orestes in his murder trial, mounts a strikingly original argument: he reasons that Orestes's mother is no more than a stranger to him. A pregnant woman is just a glorified human incubator, Apollo argues, an intravenous bag dripping nutrients through the umbilical cord into her child. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Oh, please." Hickory looked skeptical. "Your show is pure sensationalism. Tripe tabloid at its worst - " Wendy interrupted him. "We've met before, Mr. Hickory." That slowed him down. "Have we?" "When I was an assistant producer on A Current Affair. I booked you as an expert on the Robert Blake murder trial." He — Harlan Coben

Their world has changed overnight ... Even after the trial, after the verdict
whatever it might be
life would never be the same again.
That was the truth of murder. — Marian Babson

If you haven't considered it already, consider it now: there is every possibility that some of us, or all of us, may live and triumph, only to stand trial for murder. — Stephen King

Had a big trial. It was like an Errol Flynn movie. — Jeannie Walker

Bhutto's case was not a trial of murder, rather it was the overt murder of a trial - — Fatima Bhutto

I had never attended a trial until my daughter's murder trial. What I witnessed in that courtroom enraged and redirected me. — Dominick Dunne

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

Ylli, Agron and Mehmet were never given a fair and public trial, an opportunity to defend themselves, or any semblance of due process. Their post-conflict, extrajudicial killing was cold-blooded murder. — Avis Bohlen

Ultimately, Hausner's efforts regarding the murder were thwarted when questions posed by both Servatius and the judges proved that Avraham Gordon, whom Hausner called as the witness to the murder, could not have observed it.

-- The Eichmann Trial, page 99 — Deborah E. Lipstadt

I would rather,' he said, 'give a healthy boy or a healthy girl a phial of prussic acid than this novel.' (And here let me pause to make Mr. Douglas a sporting offer. I will provide a healthy boy, a phial of prussic acid, and a copy of The Well of Loneliness, and if he keeps his word and gives the boy the prussic acid I undertake to pay all expenses of his defense at the ensuing murder trial and to erect a monument to his memory after he has been hanged.) — Aldous Huxley

In this day and age where humanity is lost by so many, can a young, black child of God be put on trial for his very own murder."
~Elissa Gabrielle — Elissa Gabrielle

Going to a sensational murder trial is the only way I can relax. — John Waters

The trial seemed to be made for television. It involved an attractive lady wrestler, a wealthy Texas rancher and her architect husband, a bomb, and a murder plot. — Jacob Bembry

I loved the book [The Adderall Diaries] I optioned it, I think some years ago. But there's a lot of different threads in the book. It starts off as one thing, where he's trying to cover this murder trial, and then his own life starts to impinge on that, so it becomes something else. I found that fascinating. — James Franco

But I have a flash of Good News from the Police Atrocity front, which is heating up in Denver. ... Stand back! Good News is rare in the Criminal Justice System, but every once in a while you find it, and this is one of those times. To wit: the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has formally entered the Appeals trial of young Lisl Auman - the girl who remains locked up in a cell at the Colorado State Prison for the Rest of Her Life with No Possibility of Parole for a bogus crime she was never even Accused of committing. She is a living victim of a cold-blooded political trial that will cast a long shadow on Denver for many years to come. Lisl is the only person ever convicted in the United States for Felony Murder who was in police custody when the crime happened. — Hunter S. Thompson

Coach Perkins will stand trial for second-degree murder in Cincinnati. — Joan Bauer

Mr. Walsh?" a woman's voice said. "Can I get a comment, Mr. Walsh?"
"That's not about me, is it?" I said.
"No, my client. He's on trial for killing his business partner and dissolving him in quicklime. Which is ridiculous."
"Uh-huh."
"It is. Anyone in my client's line of work knows that quicklime is a very poor solvent. Chemical hydrolysis is the method of choice these days. — Kelley Armstrong

Bureaucracy has committed murder here in the greater New Orleans area, and bureaucracy has to stand trial before Congress now. — Aaron Broussard

In talking about the [Emmett Till murder trial], you have to repeat the atmosphere. This is Mississippi in 1955, with a long history of intimidation of witnesses and fear on the part of blacks to testify, in racial situations in particular. For someone like Mose Wright and others to testify against white defendants in a situation like this was historic. — Charles Diggs

To accept life in an Israeli open prison and enjoy limited autonomy and the right to work as underpaid laborers in Israel, bereft of any workers' rights, or 2) resist, even mildly, and risk living in a maximum-security prison, subjected to instruments of collective punishment, including house demolitions, arrests without trial, expulsions, and in severe cases, assassinations and murder. — Noam Chomsky

Your Honor, if giving the finger is a motive for murder, then most everyone in this courtroom would be on trial — Kenneth Eade

There was another crashing sound, this time coming from directly overhead, and a chorus of excited bellows from the onlookers caused the walls to tremble. Above it all, the innkeeper could be heard complaining shrilly that his building would soon be reduced to matchsticks.
"Mr. Hunt," Lillian exclaimed, "I do wish that you would try to be of some use to Lord Westcliff!"
Hunt's brows lifted into mocking crescents. "You don't actually fear that St. Vincent is getting the better of him?"
"The question is not whether I have sufficient confidence in Lord Westcliff's fighting ability," Lillian replied impatiently. "The fact is, I have too much confidence in it. And I would rather not have to bear witness at a murder trial on top of everything else."
"You have a point." Standing, Hunt refolded his handkerchief and placed it in his coat pocket. He headed to the stairs with a short sigh, grumbling, "I've spent most of the day trying to stop him from killing people. — Lisa Kleypas

Then the LORD said to Moses: Speak to the Israelites and say to them: 'When you cross the Jordan into Canaan, select some towns to be your cities of refuge, to which a person who has killed someone accidentally may flee. They will be places of refuge from the avenger, so that anyone accused of murder may not die before they stand trial before the assembly. — Anonymous

If lawyers had followed the norm of no execution without trial, if doctors had accepted the rule of no surgery without consent, if businessmen had endorsed the prohibition of slavery, if bureaucrats had refused to handle paperwork involving murder, then the Nazi regime would have been much harder pressed to carry out the atrocities by which we remember it. Professions — Timothy Snyder

I was arrested and put in murder's row. They were trying to get me for some murders I didn't do. They had me in a cell next to Charles Manson; he was going to trial at the time. And it was all a row of black and brown guys and one white guy: Charles Manson. — Luis J. Rodriguez

Mr. Buckley, let me explain it this way. And I'll do so very carefully and slowly so that even you will understand it. If I was the sheriff, I would not have arrested him. If I was on the grand jury, I would not have indicted him. If I was the judge, I would not try him. If I was the D.A., I would not prosecute him. If I was on the trial jury, I would vote to give him a key to the city, a plaque to hang on his wall, and I would send him home to his family. And, Mr. Buckley, if my daughter is ever raped, I hope I have the guts to do what he did. — John Grisham

The Garden City Telegram, on the eve of the trial's start, printed the following editorial: Some may think the eyes of the entire nation are on Garden City during this sensational murder trial. But they are not. Even a hundred miles west of here in Colorado few persons are even acquainted with the case - other than just remembering some members of a prominent family were slain. This is a sad commentary on the state of crime in our nation. Since the four members of the Clutter family were killed last fall, several other such multiple murders have occurred in various parts of the country. Just during the few days leading up to this trial at least three mass murder cases broke into the headlines. As a result, this crime and trial are just one of many such cases people have read about and forgotten ... — Truman Capote

If you go to probably any jury trial in Baltimore that involves violence, either an assault or murder, and watch the voir dire, to me, that's when you get a sense of what it's like to live in Baltimore. — Sarah Koenig

Tooter had gone back to court to testify in Billy's murder trial. The Leavenworth justice system had been a travesty for as long as I could remember, and the term "old boy network" was alive and well there. — Thomas M. Sartain