Jury Quotes

Are you good men and true?

William Shakespeare

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.

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.

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.

Emotions are reserved for juries and, in that case, a good lawyer can really lay them on when the time is right, better than the best Academy Award winning actor

Mr Judge, Jury & Executioner of Micah Xavier Johnson‬ needs to go to jail as soon as possible – he is a danger to civilized society.

The book argues that even though many cases have been held up as classic examples of modern American “witch hunts,” none of them fits that description. McMartin certainly comes close. But a careful examination of the evidence presented at trial demonstrates why, in my view, a reasonable juror could vote for conviction, as many did in this case. Other cases that have been painted as witch-hunts turn out to involve significant, even overwhelming, evidence of guilt. There are a few cases to the contrary, but even those are more complicated than the witch-hunt narrative allows. In short, there was not, by any reasonable measure, an epidemic of “witch hunts” in the 1980s. There were big mistakes made in how some cases were handled, particularly in the earliest years. But even in those years there were cases such as those of Frank Fuster and Kelly Michaels that, I believe, were based on substantial evidence but later unfairly maligned as having no evidentiary support.

When in court, the primary role of lawyers is not to prove or disprove innocence; unbeknown to almost all lawyers and their clients, it is to save the court time.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana