Eliot Spitzer Quotes

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.

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.

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

All sides in a trial want to hide at least some of the truth.

In the courtroom, it's where a lawyer really becomes an actor. There's a very fine line between delivering a monologue in a play and delivering a monologue to a jury. I've always felt that way - I've been in a lot of courtrooms. The best lawyers are really theatrical.

Your job as a trial attorney is to try to convey to the jury the essence of the people you represent.

As a lawyer, particularly in criminal law, you really do have to try to tell your story to the jury and hope that the judge makes rulings that allows your story to get through.

Lawyers know that certain witnesses are simply not going to be cooperative and are not going to answer the questions. And what matters at that point is what is your question? Because everything you want the jury to know should be in your question, or everything you want the jury to wonder about should be in your question.

The prosecution has to go with the evidence and the facts and tell the story as it happened. The defense has more creative freedom. All you have to do is look for a defense that works. But it doesn't have to be the truth. Sometimes you get lucky and it is, but sometimes you don't, and either way, it doesn't matter.

Around the courthouse when defense lawyers are chatting about their cases, the only question they ask each other is can you put your guy on the stand? Those conversations always assume the defendant is guilty. The question is just about the degree of difficulty in presenting a defense.

Well, you know, one lawyer says I'm the only witness and I'm not credible. Another lawyer says this witness - there's tons of evidence that's been available for years.

I'm an old trial lawyer.

The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts.

I am a trial lawyer. Matilda says that at dinner on a good day I sound like an affidavit.

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

If you're a prosecutor, and you believe the defendant is guilty, you only talk about ultimate truth, but not intermediate truth. If you're the defense attorney, you care deeply about intermediate truth, but you tend to neglect ultimate truth.

As a trial lawyer, intelligence is important only in the sense that it allows you to play the game, if you will. Without it, you don't even have a ticket into the competitive arena. But beyond that, it doesn't get you very far at all.

Ask any lawyer - if a prosecutor thinks he can win a case, he'll prosecute it.

I'm not pretending when I'm in that court room.

I know O.J. better than anyone on the legal team. There are so many things I know about his personality. My job is really strategy and liaison between the lawyers and O.J.

The only thing the defense has to do is take care of the client and see to it that they attack every weak spot on the prosecution's case. It's up to the judge to make sure that they don't pull any fast ones.

Courts of law require evidence to go to trial - not opinions from bureaucrats.

I was a defense attorney before I was a prosecutor, and so knowing what the defense is going to try to do is something that you have to do constantly when you're in trial. I always went to trial knowing what they were doing. So I was always in both mindsets anyway. 'Oh, they're going to do this, then I'm going to do that.'

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.

When you are being interviewed by Jeremy Paxman, you are the prisoner in the dock: assumed guilty unless proved innocent, under intense pressure, on the defensive. There are very few people who can look relaxed in that position.