Quotes About Jury

The panel was selected from the voting rolls, and, since candidates running for office seldom represent the interests of Black and poor people, Blacks and the poor don't vote. But failing to vote means they don't sit on juries.

We found out later that a lone Black juror had refused to convict us. He had heard us.

The prospective jurors in the jury room were talking about the case, although they had been ordered not to discuss it. The judge asked what they were saying. "They say she's guilty.

Jury selection continued with only the judge and the prosecutor participating.

the questions we submitted and others that the prosecutor submitted. After we went through the answers we were to pick or eliminate jurors, asking additional questions as needed. Some of the answers were so contradictory and such a study on the level of racism in amerika that it would take a book just to report on them. In one hundred percent of the cases we were able to tell whether the prospective juror was Black, white, or "other," just by reading the answers.

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.

It is also one of the pleasures of oral biography, in that the reader, rather than editor, is jury.

Lawyers know that certain witnesses are simply not going to be cooperative and are not going to answer the questions. And what matters at that point is what is your question? Because everything you want the jury to know should be in your question, or everything you want the jury to wonder about should be in your question.

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

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.

I believe in people. Human beings, deep down, are essentially good. Any jury can filter through whatever bull might be thrown their way and use common sense to get to the truth of a case. Juries make the right decisions, almost unfailingly, because people know right from wrong.

The time has come for professional jurors.

One feature of the trial – as with all other trials – was of course the fact that the jury consisted entirely of Protestants, Catholics being debarred from jury service.

Practically, every defense lawyer knows that the jury desperately wants to hear from the defendant and that the only reason not to put him on the stand is that he is soooo guilty that every answer he gives after his name will eradicate any shred of reasonable doubt.

I desire to tamper with the jury law. I wish to alter it as to put a premium on intelligence and character, and close the jury box against idiots, blacklegs, and people who do not read newspapers.

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.

On the inquest it was shown that Buck Fanshaw, in the delirium of a wasting typhoid fever, had taken arsenic, shot himself through the body, cut his throat, and jumped out of a four-story window and broken his neck—and after due deliberation, the jury, sad and tearful, but with intelligence unblinded by its sorrow, brought in a verdict of death by the visitation of God. What could the world do without juries?

They swore in the jury, and then the lawyer for the prostitution got up and begun.

There was no surer way to lose the confidence of an audience, or a jury, than by letting them think faster than yourself, so that they became aware of what you were going to say before you said it.

You know how, in court, they talk about the CSI effect? Like, everyone on the jury has watched so much CSI that they believe science can prove anything? Yeah. Well, I think there's an Evil Husband effect. Everyone has seen too many true-crime shows where the husband is always, always the killer, so people automatically assume the husband's the bad guy.

I'm serious. You know how, in court, they talk about the CSI effect? Like, everyone on the jury has watched so much CSI that they believe science can prove anything?" "Yeah." "Well, I think there's an Evil Husband effect. Everyone has seen too many true-crime shows where the husband is always, always the killer, so people automatically assume the husband's the bad guy.

With the Internet, Facebook, YouTube, there's no such thing as an unbiased jury anymore. No clean slate.

Caitlin is right, although her argument would probably offend every woman on the jury.

Most homicides, Black notes, are really instances of capital punishment, with a private citizen as the judge, jury, and executioner.