Quotes About Trial By Jury

#1. Trial by jury must and shall be preserved! Amidst the throng of crude sacrilegisms ... that assail us nowadays in the legal sanctuary, none is more shortsighted, none more dangerous, than the proposal to abolish trial by jury.

John Henry Wigmore

#2. We have a Bill of Rights, we have trial by jury. We have a notion that you are - you're innocent until you're proven guilty. We have all these things.

Joe Biden

#3. Trial by jury. Live wherever you can make a living. How could a government based on such principles fail?

Stephen Ambrose

#4. Trial by jury in civil causes, ... trial by jury in criminal causes, [and] the benefits of the writ of habeas corpus ... all stand on the same footing; they are the common rights of Americans.

Richard Henry Lee

#5. The trial by jury might safely be introduced into a despotic government, if the jury were to exercise no right of judging of the law, or the justice of the law.

Lysander Spooner

#6. Let the people have property and they will have power - a power that will forever be exerted to prevent the restriction of the press, the abolition of trial by jury, or the abridgment of any other privilege.

Noah Webster

#7. Standing up on the right to trial by jury is something that, really, a lot of people should agree with, you know, both on the Right and the Left.

Rand Paul

#8. 2. We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which through Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeas Corpus, trial by jury, and the English common law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.

Winston S. Churchill

#9. 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.

Martha Beck

#10. The object of any tyrant would be to overthrow or diminish trial by jury, for it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives.

Patrick Devlin, Baron Devlin

#11. Trial by jury is part of the bright constellation which leads to peace, liberty and safety.

Thomas Jefferson

#12. I do not apologize for advertising. I think it is as vital to the preservation of freedom in my country as the free exercise of publishing a newspaper or the free exercise of building a church or the free exercise of the right of trial by jury.

Thomas Dillon

#13. 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

#14. Trial by jury is a wise distribution of power which exceeds all other modes of trial.

Edward Coke

#15. There was not a member of the Constitutional Convention who had the least objection to what is contended for by the advocates for a Bill of Rights and trial by jury.

George Washington

#16. Loyalty is that for the lack of which your gang will shoot you without benefit of trial by jury.

Robert Frost

#17. The trial by jury is a trial by 'the country,' in contradistinction to a trial by the government. The jurors are drawn by lot from the mass of the people, for the very purpose of having all classes of minds and feelings, that prevail among the people at large, represented in the jury.

Lysander Spooner

#18. The liberty of the press, trial by jury, the Habeas Corpus Writ, even Magna Carta itself, although justly deemed the paladia of freedom, are all inferior considerations, when compared with the general distribution of real property among every class of people.

Noah Webster

#19. Trial by jury is the palladium of our liberties. I do not know what a palladium is, but I am sure it is a good thing!

Mark Twain

#20. Trial by jury must be preserved. It is the best system ever invented for a free people in the world's history.

John Henry Wigmore

#21. The wisdom of our ages and the blood of our heroes has been devoted to the attainment of trial by jury. It should be the creed of our political faith.

Thomas Jefferson

#22. When it comes to sports I am not particularly interested. Generally speaking, I look upon them as dangerous and tiring activities performed by people with whom I share nothing except the right to trial by jury.

Fran Lebowitz

#23. Cross-examination is beyond any doubt the greatest legal engine ever invented for the discovery of truth ... Cross-examination, not trial by jury, is the great and permanent contribution of the Anglo-American system of law to improved methods of trial-procedure.

John Henry Wigmore

#24. I think that it is high time that we remembered that we have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution. I think that it is high time that we remembered that the Constitution, as amended, speaks not only of the freedom of speech but also of trial by jury instead of trial by accusation.

Margaret Chase Smith

#25. That in controversies respecting property, and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other, and ought to be held sacred.

George Mason

#26. We opposed unlimited detention without trial. We stood up for trial by jury as well. And of course we spoke up for asylum seekers and for the most vulnerable in our society.

Charles Kennedy

#27. 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

#28. It wasn't just Adnan being indicted at this grand jury proceeding, it wasn't just him being prosecuted. His faith, his ethnicity, his community--they were all on trial.

Rabia Chaudry

#29. 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

#30. Only a very foolish lawyer will dare guess the outcome of a jury trial.

Jerome Frank

#31. 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.

Vincent Bugliosi

#32. If rowing is a trial then the ergometer is the courtroom, the meter is the jury. And an honest jury at that, because the numbers do not lie.

Barry S. Strauss

#33. It was ridiculous to think that twelve people could turn off' all their biases and prejudices and make a logical decision based on the evidence they were allowed to hear in the trial.

Kenneth Eade

#34. 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

#35. 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

#36. The United States and the European Union do want to have a rule of law, and that rule of law should be for a fair trial. And that fair trial needs to have an impartial jury.

Maria Cantwell

#37. 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.

Al Sharpton

#38. Even though the Judge would charge the jury that they should listen to all the evidence before they made up their minds, the chances were likely that 100% of them will have already decided if William was guilty or not before the trial was over.

Kenneth Eade

#39. I view myself primarily as a trial lawyer who happens to be writing, as opposed to a writer who happens to be a trial lawyer, so the audience is like a jury to me.

Vincent Bugliosi

#40. Earlier today, the jury at the Martha Stewart trial reached a verdict. Martha was found guilty on all charges. In a related story, there's a huge sale at K-Mart.

Conan O'Brien

#41. A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government.

Byron White

#42. The law of England has established trial by judge and jury in the conviction that it is the mode best calculated to ascertain the truth.

Jeremy Bentham

#43. A fox should not be on the jury at a goose's trial.

Thomas Fuller

#44. A fox should not be of the jury at a goose's trial.

Thomas Fuller

#45. There was an interesting development in the CBS-Westmoreland trial:
both sides agreed that after the trial, Andy Rooney would be allowed to
talk to the jury for three minutes about little things that annoyed him
during the trial.

David Letterman

#46. But in the absence of eye-witness there's always a doubt, sometimes only the shadow of a doubt. The law says 'reasonable doubt', but I think a defendant's entitled to the shadow of doubt. There's always the possibility, no matter how improbable, that he's innocent.

Harper Lee

#47. Welcome to a shifter's world. Rules existed to keep them in line and to keep their existence secret. Break them and there was no lengthy trial, no jury. Just swift and final justice.

Eve Langlais

#48. Any good trial lawyer knows that if you've got one credible expert or scientific study, then you can let the jury decide.

Joe Jamail

#49. 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

#50. No one can just file a charge and go directly to a jury trial. That just cannot happen.

Robert P. McCulloch