Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There are two MFA programs here at the University of Texas, and I read on the jury of both of them. And it's amazing to me how many really talented young writers seem to fear humor.
Being on a grand jury felt like attending a series of hangings in a legal Wild West. Hands up for a true bill. Hands up for a dismissal. A show of hands to save a life, or to end it.
There is no such thing as an impartial jury because there are no impartial people. There are people that argue on the web for hours about who their favorite character on 'Friends' is.
I have many things to say. My every right, constitutional, civil, political and judicial has been tramped upon. I have not only had no jury of my peers, but I have had no jury at all.
A State which has universal suffrage and a wide extension of the jury franchise, must qualify the people by education to rightly exercise the great powers with which they are invested.
As a former prosecutor, I never presented a case in front of the grand jury that didn't result in an indictment. Bottom line: If a prosecutor wants to indict a case, the case gets indicted.
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.
If a jury have not the right to judge between the government and those who disobey its laws, and resist its oppressions, the government is absolute, and the people, legally speaking, are slaves.
Owing to the fact that leaders in the women's groups made a point of serving on the jury here whenever they were called, we have always had an unusually high type of women represented on the jury.
In the past there has been debate as to whether or not traditional rights such as that to trial by jury might be protected or if a Bill of Rights should extend into areas of social and economic policy.
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.
Our awards are selected by a jury of media and fans. It's a blended vote, which is a very unique process. That's what we've found works best for this industry, to have gamers and publications vote on it.
As a trial lawyer in front of a jury and an author of true-crime books, credibility has always meant everything to me. My only master and my only mistress are the facts and objectivity. I have no others.
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.
After the verdict was read in the Simpson case, as the jury was leaving, one of them, I was later told, said, 'We think he probably did it. We just didn't think they proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.'
I did not see any major issues other than the jury substitutions. I can't know whether there's a problem there, until I read the transcript from the in-chambers conference, when those jurors were excused.
In a sinful world, no community can exist for long where nobody is ever held accountable: no teacher would grade a student's performance; no citizen would sit on a jury or call a failed leader to account.
There may sometimes be a mistake, but I think that the citizens of America who are sworn to uphold their duty in a jury setting are going to try to do their best to do that regardless of the consequences.
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.
Good-looking individuals are treated better than homely ones in virtually every social situation, from dating to trial by jury. If everyday experience hasn't convinced you of this, there's research that will.
No court presumes to tell a jury that they are to try a capital case with the same indifference and unconcern as to consequences, that they would a case where the results of their decision would be less important.
There's a lot of money with a lot of big law firms that have a tremendous amount at stake by getting the right language to convince the right jury that my client is either innocent or that the opposition is guilty.
Monetizing by creating more value for a Venmo user makes a ton of sense to me. But other forms of monetization that are more intrusive, like in advertising or something like that, the jury is really still out for me.
I hardly expected the grand jury to sustain me, after they saw everything different from what it had been while I was there. Yet they did, and their report to the court advises all the changes made that I had proposed.
I had seen 'Onaatah' when I was a part of the National Film Awards jury in 2016. I was very impressed with the film because it was a small but a very inspiring film. Since it touched my heart, I thought of remaking it.
It would be enough for me to have the system of a jury of twelve versus the system of one judge as a basis for preferring the U.S. to the Soviet Union. I would prefer the country you can leave to the country you cannot.
The grand jury system - not just in Ferguson, but nationwide - needs a hard look. Millions feel that officers who are trigger-happy are handed a license to shoot - based not on facts, but on stereotypes the officers carry.
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.
I have been one of the guys who have been skeptical of global warming from the beginning. The jury is obviously still out on it. We see nothing but conflicting reports from across the globe. I'm not sure; I'm not a scientist.
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.
I was a fat kid who didn't discover the joys of active play at the time of life when we're supposed to be imprinted with a love of movement. That means that I'd rather be called for jury duty than go to the gym, but I go anyway.
I've never been one to take glee in anyone's demise, and when I saw Jerry Sandusky walk out in handcuffs, I did kind of feel a bit sorry for him, even though the jury found him to do some horrific things; I was like, 'His life is over.'
During my jury selection process, we went through over 360 jurors. It took six months, all New York residents. Of the 360 jurors, over half of them had been mugged one time. Quite a number of them, maybe 30 40, 50, had been mugged twice.
The Ferguson Grand Jury's decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown is a miscarriage of justice. It is a slap in the face to Americans nationwide who continue to hope and believe that justice will prevail.
Bill Clinton was impeached primarily for criminal conduct: lying under oath and misleading a federal grand jury about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Nixon would have been impeached for a wide array of criminal acts, as well as abuses of power.
If the jury have no right to judge of the justice of a law of the government, they plainly can do nothing to protect the people against the oppressions of the government; for there are no oppressions which the government may not authorize by law.
I think right now the jury is out on where and how much profit is available in the consumer electronics industry, because if you look at the current consumer electronics players, the biggest ones on the planet struggle to make profit consistently.
Scientists want to know the evidence behind a statement; they want reproducible tests and verifiable facts. There is a big difference in the thought process of a trial lawyer who is interested not in what's true but what he can convince a jury is true.
The jury is not in, so we just don't know. But there are very strong indications that wormholes that a human could travel through are forbidden by the laws of physics. That's sad, that's unfortunate, but that's the direction in which things are pointing.
I met Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu years ago during my college days, and I was in charge of international promotion of this movie festival he was invited to as part of the jury, and then he saw my work on a short film that was directed by a friend of mine.
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.
Some find that very optimistic people have benign illusions about themselves. These people may think they have more control, or more skill, than they actually do. Others have found that optimistic people have a good handle on reality. The jury is still out.
In Staten Island, when you have video showing the alleged chokehold used on Eric Garner, why not go to trial and have the officer(s) explain the tape, and then this jury can determine guilt or innocence? The tape should guarantee that there should be a trial.
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.
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.
In the courtroom, it's where a lawyer really becomes an actor. There's a very fine line between delivering a monologue in a play and delivering a monologue to a jury. I've always felt that way - I've been in a lot of courtrooms. The best lawyers are really theatrical.
In our system, we leave questions of fact to a jury. But to render a verdict, a jury must know the law. For this, we rely upon jury instructions. Instructions are supposed to translate the law into lay terms that the jury can apply to the facts as they determine them.
You had to have a unanimous jury verdict, and one percent of contributory negligence barred all recovery. It was so satisfying to realize I could do it. And I'll tell you what motivated me: competitiveness. I was betting on me. That's what a contingent-fee lawyer does.
The 5th Amendment guarantees that defendants can't face 'double jeopardy,' which means the government can't prosecute a person a second time for the same crime if the jury returns a verdict. Only if the jury doesn't reach a decision can prosecutors elect to retry the case.
Film fests are an opportunity to see different kinds of films that you usually don't get to watch. When I'm part of a jury, then I get to judge films, but otherwise I attend festivals to watch two or three films a day and network with a gathering of cinema lovers from all over.