A grand jury hears only one side - that of the prosecutor — Donella Meadows
When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty. — Norm Crosby
Some people try to get out of jury duty by lying. You don't have to lie. Tell the judge the truth. Tell him you'd make a terrific juror because you can spot guilty people. — George Carlin
I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution. — Thomas Jefferson
A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government. — Byron White
I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury. — Groucho Marx
People are tried and convicted in the newspapers and on television before they ever see a courtroom. — Assata Shakur
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. — Alan Dershowitz
The United States government can indict you on something, and now you've got to prove your innocence. And that's not the Constitution of the United States. — Leonard Peltier
Whether a man is guilty or innocent, we have to find that out by due process of law. — Andy Griffith
In suits at common law, trial by jury in civil cases is as essential to secure the liberty of the people as any one of the pre-existent rights of nature. — James Madison
My job as a prosecutor is to do justice. And justice is served when a guilty man is convicted and an innocent man is not. — Sonia Sotomayor
We are like a judge confronted by a defendant who declines to answer, and we must determine the truth from the circumstantial evidence. — Alfred Wegener
Money will determine whether the accused goes to prison or walks out of the courtroom a free man. — Johnnie Cochran
Jury Quotes
If violent crime is to be curbed, it is only the intended victim who can do it. The felon does not fear the police, and he fears neither judge nor jury. Therefore what he must be taught to fear is his victim. — Jeff Cooper
In fact, for all kinds of offenses - and, for no offenses - from murders to misdemeanors, men and women are put to death without judge or jury; so that, although the political excuse was no longer necessary, the wholesale murder of human beings went on just the same. — Ida B. Wells
Orchids were not made by an ideal engineer; they are jury-rigged from a limited set of available components. — Stephen Jay Gould
What is life but one grand adventure.
A man's rights rest in three boxes: the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box. — Frederick Douglass
Educate your sons and daughters, send them to school, and show them that beside the cartridge box, the ballot box, and the jury box, you also have the knowledge box. — Frederick Douglass
Life is like jury duty. Just do it and get it over with. — Dana Gould
The world is like a grand staircase. Some are going up and some are going down.
All I did in Chicago was to exercise my legal right to speak on my own behalf and I was given four years in jail as a result. But I think the most serious injustice perpetrated by the court system in America is the inability of a black man to get a jury of his peers. — Bobby Seale
The world is not a courtroom There is no judge no jury no plaintiff. This is a caravan filled with eccentric beings telling wondrous stories about God. — Saadi Shirazi
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
It's not our job to play judge and jury, to determine who is worthy of our kindness and who is not. We just need to be kind, unconditionally and without ulterior motive, even - or rather, especially - when we'd prefer not to be. — Josh Radnor
Grand Quotes
The grand show is eternal
It is always sunrise somewhere — John Muir
What is most important of this grand experiment, the United States? Not the election of the first president but the election of its second president. The peaceful transition of power is what will separate this country from every other country in the world. — George Washington
The past is no more; the future not yet. Nothing exists except the here and now. Our grand business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at our hands. — Bruce Lee
Someday, in the distant future, our grand-children' s grand-children will develop a new equivalent of our classrooms. They will spend many hours in front of boxes with fires glowing within. May they have the wisdom to know the difference between light and knowledge. — Plato
There exists within everyone a grand passion, an outlandish thirst for adventure, a desire to live boldly and vividly through the journey of life. — Kurt Hahn
You cannot be buried in obscurity: you are exposed upon a grand theater to the view of the world. If your actions are upright and benevolent, be assured they will augment your power and happiness. — Cyrus the Great
We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. — Howard Zinn
They say you forget your troubles on a trout stream, but that's not quite it. What happens is that you begin to see where your troubles fit into the grand scheme of things, and suddenly they're just not such a big deal anymore. — John Gierach
A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust. — Gertrude Jekyll
To escape jury duty in England, wear a bowler hat and carry a copy of the Daily telegraph. — John Mortimer
Getting out of jury duty is easy. The trick is to say you're prejudiced against all races. — Dan Castellaneta
Only Lawyers and mental defectives are automatically exempt for jury duty. — George Bernard Shaw
Life is a tragedy filled with suffering and despair and yet some people do manage to avoid jury duty. — Woody Allen
It is not only the juror's right, but his duty to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment and conscience, though in direct opposition to the instruction of the court. — John Adams
I had only been a citizen for two weeks when I received a summons to appear for jury duty! — Alex Trebek
I got put on jury duty, which is where I learned how to write. — David O. Russell
I don't get into politics, general or musical, but just call me if you get jury duty. Even in New Jersey I was able to help somebody. — Eugene Ormandy
If the question [before justices of the peace] relate to any point of public liberty, or if it be one of those in which the judges may be suspected of bias, the jury undertake to decide both law and fact. — Thomas Jefferson
Along with voting, jury duty, and paying taxes, goofing off is one of the central obligations of American citizenship. — Sarah Vowell
Judge And Jury Quotes
If you violate Nature's laws you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman. — Luther Burbank
To deny political equality is to rob the ostracised of all self-respect; of credit in the market place; of recompense in the world of work; of a voice among those who make and administer the law; a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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
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
A grand jury would 'indict a ham sandwich,' if that's what you wanted. — Sayings
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.
No president has the right to say he is judge, jury and executioner. — Rand Paul
A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non-citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush's order calls this Soviet-style abomination 'a full and fair trial.' — William Safire
Jury - A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him. — H. L. Mencken
Normally a grand jury will indict a ham sandwich if a prosecutor asks it to. — Chuck Robb
The Oscar nominations are out, and they're so white a grand jury has decided not to indict them. — Larry Wilmore
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. — Jim Garrison
That D.C. grand jury investigation of Abramoff can't go on forever. Eventually the lawyers at the Public Integrity Section will go to their bosses with some decisions about just who they want to indict. That's when Al Gonzales will have to show his cards. — Joshua Micah Marshall
There are two other SLA members who have been granted immunity and then also, one of the SLA members had confessed to two other people, and those people, I'm sure, will be called as witnesses, as they were at the grand jury. — Patty Hearst
In 1994 the U.S. Court of Appeals decided in the case of Oliver North to permit the release of grand jury evidence, because it had already been so thoroughly leaked — Donella Meadows
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
I have ever had the single aim of justice in view. No judge who is influenced by any other consideration is fit for the bench. 'Do equal and exact justice,' is my motto, and I have often said to the grand jury, 'Permit no innocent man to be punished, but let no guilty man escape. — Isaac Parker
A federal grand jury is investigating allegations that David Copperfield raped, assaulted and threatened a woman he took to his private island in the Bahamas in July. What happened to the good old days when a guy would just saw you in half? — Chelsea Handler
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 have fully cooperated with the investigation and before the grand jury, and I'm quite confident at the end of the day that we'll know what facts are in this particular case. — Alberto Gonzales
We were right about the slush fund. But Sloan did not testify about it to the Grand Jury. — Ben Bradlee
When you hear in the tape recordings Nixon's own voice saying, We have to stonewall, We have to lie to the Grand Jury, We have to pay burglars a million dollars, it's all too clear the horror of what went on. — Bob Woodward
As I said last week in the wake of the grand jury decision, I think Ferguson laid bare a problem that is not unique to St. Louis or that area, and is not unique to our time, and that is a simmering distrust that exists between too many police departments and too many communities of color. — Barack Obama
On a certain level, we don't try enough cases. We should try more cases before juries and let jurors decide. On grand juries, my position is the grand jury should be eliminated, but there are creative ways a lawyer can use a grand jury if they have a client with a sympathetic cause who has been wronged by the police. — Lynne Stewart
Julian Assange shouldn't be the subject of a grand jury hearing, he should be given a medal. He's contributing to democracy. — Noam Chomsky
So the fact that the grand jury would come back and make the decision not to indict the jailers and not make a decision on Officer Encinia, it makes us feel as though there's not going to be a positive outcome for us in that regard. — Sharon Cooper
Prosecutors are allowed to cherry-pick what evidence, if any, that they do present to a grand jury. So the grand jury process overall is flawed. And that's why it should not be utilized in this case and so many cases that are similar to this. — Sharon Cooper
More details coming out about Michael Jackson. It seems his 13-year-old accuser testified before a grand jury that Michael had seven locks on his bedroom door. See, what happened was whenever Michael would install one lock, the kid would grow an inch taller, and he'd have to put in another one, and then another one, and then another one. — Jay Leno
It may be that the requirement of a preliminary approval by the Grand Jury, of all accusations of a serious nature, justified the boast that a man was presumed to be innocent until he was 'found' guilty; but that presumption certainly ceased to have practical application, so soon as the Grand Jury had returned a 'true bill'. — Edward Jenks
The police were also ready with more formidable tools of intimidation. The office also assigned a veteran homicide prosecutor to oversee the investigation. All this activity sent a signal to Condit. If he didn't play ball, he might find himself called to testify before a grand jury under oath. — Wolf Blitzer
One mechanism of repression is the grand jury. — Michael Parenti
I felt grand juries were illegal and coercive. — Bernardine Dohrn
That D.C. grand jury investigation of Abramoff can't go on forever. Eventually the lawyers at the Public Integrity Section will go to their bosses with some decisions about just who they want to indict. That's when Al Gonzales will have to show his cards. — Josh Marshall
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
The grand jury's job is not to weigh the evidence from both sides; it is only to decide whether there is enough evidence on one side to bring a person to trial. — Donella Meadows
I did answer all of the questions put to me today, ... Nothing in my testimony in any way contradicted the strong denials that the president has made to these allegations, and since I have been asked to return and answer some additional questions, I think that it's best that I not answer any questions out here and reserve that to the grand jury. — John Podesta
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
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