Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
To force a lawyer on a defendant can only lead him to believe that the law contrives against him.
A defendant can use discovery to run out the clock on the plaintiff and to make the plaintiff run out of money.
President Trump is a defense lawyer's worst nightmare - and a dream defendant for special counsel Robert Mueller.
A defendant on trial for a specific crime is entitled to his day in court, not in a stadium or a city or nationwide arena.
The higher someone's profile, the easier it is for a defendant to trade him up to the feds. Mr. Big is always a better catch than Mr. Small.
Ask any experienced defense lawyer: the real risks are for an accused person who is innocent. A guilty defendant has many more options available.
I told the truth when I said I have never been arrested. I have never been handcuffed or fingerprinted. I have never appeared in court as a defendant.
The defendant wants to hide the truth because he's generally guilty. The defense attorney's job is to make sure the jury does not arrive at that truth.
Why should the court impose a judgment in a case in which the SEC alleges a serious securities fraud, but the defendant neither admits nor denies wrongdoing?
Trump is not the victim of the judicial system; he is or has been the defendant in 3,500 lawsuits - that's not the mark of a victim but rather a perpetrator.
Here we have a situation where a defendant in a case agrees to an interview with Dan Rather. It happened to be not confidential. But it was an interview with Dan Rather.
The grand jury, composed of 12 eminent New Orleans citizens, heard our evidence and indicted the defendant for participation in a conspiracy to assassinate John Kennedy.
I'm sure I took some licks at the system, and at trials and lawyers in general. I've seen enough of them for so many years both as a cop and a defendant in defamation cases.
In civil or criminal litigation in a jury case, the only way for a defendant to avoid a trial is for a judge to rule that there was no evidence from which the jury could find for the other side.
I got the chance to argue my first case in Supreme Court, a criminal case arising in Alabama that involved the right of a defendant to counsel at a critical stage in a capital case before a trial.
To exclude all jurors who would be in the slightest way affected by the prospect of the death penalty would be to deprive the defendant of the impartial jury to which he or she is entitled under the law.
The great joy of being a prosecutor is that you don't take whatever case walks in the door. You evaluate the case; you make your best judgement. You only go forward if you believe that the defendant is guilty.
Publicly, defense lawyers cling to the text book theory that the defendant has no burden of proof and that no negative inference should ever be taken when a defendant doesn't defend himself on the witness stand.
Demanding that all of us presume every defendant innocent outside of a courtroom is to demand that we stop evaluating facts, thereby suffocating independent thought and opinion. There is nothing 'reasonable' about that.
If everyone on the Court always voted for the prosecution against the defendant, for the corporation against the plaintiffs, and for the government against the condemned, a vital spark of American democracy would be extinguished.
If you're a prosecutor, and you believe the defendant is guilty, you only talk about ultimate truth, but not intermediate truth. If you're the defense attorney, you care deeply about intermediate truth, but you tend to neglect ultimate truth.
The prosecution has an ethical duty to ensure not just that they get a conviction when the defendant is guilty, but also to ensure that they get it by means of fair trial, and that means a fair trial for the defense as well as the prosecution.
When you come in to court as a plaintiff or as a defendant, it is terribly important that you look up at the bench and feel that that person represents you and will understand you, that that person is reflective of our community and of our society.
We should not televise trials. There's only one purpose for a criminal trial. It's to determine whether or not the defendant committed the crime. Anything that interferes or has the potential of interfering with that should automatically be prohibited.
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.
The EPA code needs to set forth a clear, regular, and rational system of penalties for violations of its code, with the amount of the penalty set in proportion to the amount of pollutant released by a given defendant, and no penalties imposed in the absence of any pollutant released.
Around the courthouse when defense lawyers are chatting about their cases, the only question they ask each other is can you put your guy on the stand? Those conversations always assume the defendant is guilty. The question is just about the degree of difficulty in presenting a defense.
It is an established principle of jurisprudence in all civilized nations that the sovereign cannot be sued in its own courts, or in any other, without its consent and permission; but it may, if it thinks proper, waive this privilege, and permit itself to be made a defendant in a suit by individuals, or by another State.
Every defendant knows, if endowed with the mental competence for criminal responsibility, that the life he will take by his homicidal behavior is that of a unique person, like himself, and that the person to be killed probably has close associates, 'survivors,' who will suffer harms and deprivations from the victim's death.
With Bill Clinton, his lawyers always wanted him to say nothing about the Lewinsky scandal. Defendant Clinton had the right to remain silent. But President Clinton had a completely different need - political survival. That meant, in the end, that he needed to trumpet his supposed innocence and talk publicly to the American people.
As one who was a prosecutor for many years, I can tell you that having a tape recording of interrogations would help everybody. It would make clear if there had been improper pressure exerted on a defendant or witness, and it would also protect the interrogating officer from false claims that such pressure had been brought to bear.