Jacques Verges Quotes

And understandably so, that when you're in legal jeopardy, you really cannot put yourself in a position to open yourself up to the media.

When an office-holder facing a multi-count indictment says that he has decided to spend more time with his family, the proper response is a horse-laugh. When an accused politician explains that a charge of corruption is 'really' an attack on his or her race, religion, ethnic background or gender, the odds that something felonious happened jumps.

Each time I told them I didn't kill my wife.

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

All my life I have been under investigation.... I will just have to hire 200 more lawyers to keep me out of jail.

People say I've had brushes with the law. That's not true. I've had brushes with overzealous prosecutors.

I can't begin to describe how humiliating it is for a law-abiding citizen to be cross-examined in a court of law for a crime he hasn't committed.

Listen, not everybody can afford to get a great lawyer and defend yourself against something that you didn't do.

An innocent man, if accused, can be acquitted; a guilty man, unless accused, cannot be condemned. It is, however, more advantageous to absolve an innocent than not to prosecute a guilty man.

People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty.

The more you look at the death penalty, that's where you see that we're actually not killing the worst of the worst. We're killing the poorest of the poor. Where actually one of the biggest determinants of who gets executed is how many resources they have to defend themselves.

When people were subjected to the impeachment and removal process, Aaron Burr was right there, looking out for their rights, even though it wasn't in his political interest to do so.

I had a situation where Bill Clinton sent the F.B.I. after me.

I don't have to prove my innocence to the court or to the news media.

I am an innocent man, but I don't want to indulge in any controversy.

The Attorney General of the United States is, of course, not the president's lawyer. The AG is supposed to be the attorney for the United States, protecting the rule of law.

The criminal defense attorney is misunderstood if not despised by most of society. It doesn't matter if we believe in our adversarial system and the ideal that everyone charged with a crime is entitled to a vigorous defense. Ideals give away to reality - defense lawyers working loopholes and angles to get their clients off.

I represented a man on death row whose lawyers had spent all of eight hours looking into his claim of innocence. I met men whose lawyers had never looked into their backgrounds.

Like other human institutions, courts and juries are not perfect. One cannot have a system of criminal punishment without accepting the possibility that someone will be punished mistakenly.

Were I ever alone in the dock, I would not want to be arraigned before our flawed tribunals, knowing my freedom could be forfeit as a result of political pressures. I would prefer a fair trial, under the shadow of the noose.

I had only one idea before me throughout the trial, i.e. to show complete indifference towards the trial in spite of serious nature of the charges against us.

My first job out of law school was representing people on death row in North Carolina, where I often saw the impact of hasty prosecutions.

A prime minister cannot preside over Israel when an indictment has been filed against him.

A lawyer wants to get his client off the hook. And even if he knows the client is guilty, he is going to find ways and means of getting him off the hook.

Any U.S. attorney's office would fall over itself to investigate, for example, a state governor who, while running for reelection against a former mayor, so much as hinted to the mayor's successor that, say, highway funds would be restricted unless the current mayor were to announce an inquiry into her predecessor's alleged corruption.