F. Lee Bailey Quotes

It would seem, therefore, that this constitutional safeguard may no longer serve its original purpose, especially when, as we learned last year, some acts of perjury may now be acceptable - in this world, at least, if not the next.

That justice should be administered between men, it is necessary that testimonies of fact be alleged; and that witnesses should apprehend themselves greatly obliged to discover the truth, according to their conscience, in dark and doubtful cases.

It is surely easier to confess a murder over a cup of coffee than in front of a jury.

It is better that a guilty man should not be brought to trial than that he should be acquitted.

The courtroom oath—to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth—is applicable only to witnesses... because the American justice system is built on a foundation of not telling the whole entire truth.

In the United States, authorities are supposed to investigate crimes and find the people who have committed them.

We are not supposed to go out and kill all those we suspect to have committed a crime.

We will not rest until we see the suspects behind bars.

Justice will overtake fabricators of lies and false witnesses.

Laws undertake to punish only overt acts.

Lying under oath, and encouraging lies under oath, does go to the very heart and soul of what courts do. If we say we don't care, let's forget about courts, and we'll just have other ways of figuring out how to handle disputes.

I'm a prosecutor first and foremost, and as a judge, I put people in jail for extended periods of time when that was appropriate.

It is the crime not the scaffold which is the disgrace.

I don't always get to do a lot of bad guys.

And from the moment that we realized it was a terrorist attack, there isn't an agent or a support person in the FBI that wasn't committed to bringing to justice those who were responsible for this.

Man is unique in creation because he has a sense of justice and truth. We spend billions of dollars each year to set up court systems to see that justice is done, and we build prisons for those who transgress the laws we enact.

I say you must not win an unjust case by oaths.

If you commit perjury in a so-called first-degree murder case, and you're caught red-handed for the entire world to see, and you get only a $200 fine, what kind of message does that send about lying in our courts?

If we started prosecuting people for sin, we’d all be in jail.

The experience of being a prosecutor gives us a sort of proctologists view of our society.

The most malign of all these dangers today is disregard and disobedience of law. Crime is increasing. Confidence in rigid and speedy justice is decreasing. I am not prepared to believe that this indicates any decay in the moral fiber of the American people. I am not prepared to believe that it indicates an impotence of the Federal Government to enforce its laws.

When citizens testify before grand juries they are required to tell the truth. Without the truth, our criminal justice system cannot serve our nation or its citizens.

The criminal law tries to define moral standards.

Prosecutors are assessed by their win-loss records, not by whether they have furthered the cause of justice.

I know what it means to prosecute people.