Robert B. Weide Quotes

The great joy of being a prosecutor is that you don't take whatever case walks in the door. You evaluate the case; you make your best judgement. You only go forward if you believe that the defendant is guilty.

I think the prosecution had all the evidence in front of them to have won the case.

Criminal cases require strategy, and prosecutors should attempt to prove only what can be proved.

Ask any experienced defense lawyer: the real risks are for an accused person who is innocent. A guilty defendant has many more options available.

Petty juries, consisting usually of twelve men, attend courts to try matters of fact in civil causes, and to decide both the law and the fact in criminal prosecutions. The decision of a petty jury is called a verdict.

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.

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.

We provided complete protection to witnesses - right of attorney, right of record, right to cross-examine, and open hearing if they desired. Only Mr. Lane asked for an open hearing.

I should have known. The first tip I got was when she rarely showed up in court for the second trial.

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

I spent time in, like, criminal courts, and covering murder trials for papers.

I was in the courtroom prosecuting violent felonies for well over a decade.

The work of deciding cases goes on every day in hundreds of courts throughout the land. Any judge, one might suppose, would find it easy to describe the process which he had followed a thousand times and more. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

And unless you think there is a serious chance you're going to jail, don't listen to your lawyer.

Doing a thing by law, or according to law, is only carrying the law into execution. And punishing a man by, or according to, the sentence or judgment of his peers, is only carrying that sentence or judgment into execution.

The defendant wants to hide the truth because he's generally guilty. The defense attorney's job is to make sure the jury does not arrive at that truth.

Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that's so deep in history that there's no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.

The trial of a case is a three-legged stool - a judge and two advocates.

An indictment is not a conviction.

Plea bargaining is a system that is best described as one of condemnation without adjudication. It is a system that replaces trial, which is what our constitution intended, with deals… those deals are coerced. The prosecutor is basically forcing people to waive their rights to jury trial by threatening them with ever greater sanctions if they refuse to plead and instead demand the right to jury trial.

Mr. Justice, there are unanswerable questions in this case.

Indictments don't mean anything; men are entitled to be innocent until they are proved guilty.

The first thing a good lawyer does is immediately presume the guilt of his client.

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

Let law enforcement determine guilt or innocence.