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Juries Quotes

Browse 12 quotes about Juries.

Juries Quotes

“All my instincts are one way, and all the facts are the other, and I much fear that British juries have not yet attained that pitch of intelligence when they will give the preference to my theories over Lestrade's facts.”

FactsEvidenceInstinctIntelligenceInsightIntuitionSuperiorityDetectivesCriminal JusticeSherlock HolmesTheoriesJuriesCrime Solving
Book:The Adventure of the Norwood Builder - a Sherlock Holmes Short Story
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“I was coming to understand that trials are a contest of stories. Basically, there are two opposing stories, very different from each other, that are in effect two artefacts obtained by combining the same elements—the mythemes—in different ways. Don’t hire a lawyer, hire a good writer. Because it’s not the truth that will win, but the person who tells the best story, the most coherent and believable one. In other words, the most mythological story, the one best able to fit the world view of the jurors.”

StoriesTruthBeliefJusticeMythologyTrialsArgumentsJuries
Book:Las madres no
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“Nine of us now seem to feel that the defendant is innocent, but we're just gambling on probabilities. We may be wrong. We may be trying to return a guilty man to the community. No one can really know. But we have a reasonable doubt, and this is a safeguard that has enormous value in our system. No jury can declare a man guilty unless it's sure. We nine can't understand how you three are still so sure. Maybe you can tell us.”

TruthEvidenceReasonable DoubtJuries
Book:Twelve Angry Men
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“When a serious felony case went to trial in a county like Monroe County, which was 40 percent black, it was not uncommon for prosecutors to exclude all African Americans from jury service. In fact, twenty years after the civil rights revolution, the jury remained an institution largely unchanged by the legal requirements of racial integration and diversity. As far back as the 1880s, the Supreme Court ruled in Strauder v. West Virginia that excluding black people from jury service was unconstitutional, but juries remained all-white for decades afterward. In 1945, the Supreme Court upheld a Texas statute that limited the number of black jurors to exactly one per case. In Deep South states, jury rolls were pulled from voting rolls, which excluded African Americans. After the Voting Rights Act passed, court clerks and judges still kept the jury rolls mostly white through various tactics designed to undermine the law. Local jury commissions used statutory requirements that jurors be "intelligent and upright" to exclude African Americans and women. In the 1970s, the Supreme Court ruled that underrepresentation of racial minorities and women in jury pools was unconstitutional, which in some communities at least led to black people being summoned to the courthouse for possible selection as jurors (if not selected). The Court had repeatedly made clear, though, that the Constitution does not require that racial minorities and women actually serve on juries—it only forbids excluding jurors on the basis of race or gender.”

WomenRaceRacismTrialsDiscriminationAfrican AmericansBlacksRace RelationsLegal SystemJuries
Book:Just Mercy
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