Donella Meadows Quotes

I spent my time trying to understand grand jury procedure - a topic about which I never before had the slightest interest.

Trials are no longer about freeing the innocent, punishing the guilty, and making restitution to the injured. They have devolved into a contest over who will win.

A federal grand jury can indict on no evidence at all. I want everyone to understand that the fact that there's an indictment means nothing, zippo, absolutely nothing.

I believe in the jury system.

The Constitution does not trust judges to make determinations of criminal guilt.

Indictments of any kind are serious. That being said, let's not forget that an indictment is not a conviction. We still have due process in this country.

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.

I have faith in the jury system.

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

I don't think the law exists to arrive at the truth. If it did, we wouldn't have exclusionary rules, we wouldn't have presumptions of innocence, we wouldn't have proof beyond reasonable doubt. There's an enormous difference between the role of truth in law and the role of truth in science. In law, truth is one among many goals.

I have great faith in the jury system.

A criminal trial is never about seeking justice for the victim. If it were, there could be only one verdict: guilty.

A fair trial is one in which the rules of evidence are honored, the accused has competent counsel, and the judge enforces the proper courtroom procedures - a trial in which every assumption can be challenged.

We operate under a jury system in this country, and as much as we complain about it, we have to admit that we know of no better system, except possibly flipping a coin.

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.

Believe it or not, there are people who want to be on juries.

Putting pressure on grand juries to indict in my view is un-American. A grand jury should be allowed to be fair and impartial. They shouldn't have people yelling and screaming.

The American system of criminal prosecution is accusatorial, not inquisitional, and the 5th Amendment is its essential mainstay.

There are very few countries in the world where we have a jury system as we all know.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

Let law enforcement determine guilt or innocence.

Our entire legal system bets a great deal on the proposition that this ‘adversary’ system is the least imperfect way to develop all the truth: the corollary is that we must look on partisanship not as an evil but as a part of the system's working.

Laymen ought not to be accused save by dependable and lawful accusers and witnesses.

Trial by jury slows the wheels of justice.

The Saxon laws … decided almost all matters of any doubt amongst them by methods which, however inadequate, were extremely simple. They judged every controversy either by the conscience of the parties, or by the country’s opinion of it, or what they judged an appeal to Providence. They were unwilling to submit to the trouble of weighing contradictory testimonies; and they were destitute of those critical rules by which evidence is sifted, the true distinguished from the false, the certain from the uncertain.