Alan Dershowitz Quotes

If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.

There are more important things than finding the murderer. And justice is a fine word, but it is sometimes difficult to say exactly what one means by it. In my opinion, the important thing is to clear the innocent. - Hercule Poirot

A trial without witnesses, when it involves a criminal accusation, a criminal matter, is not a true trial.

I am not guilty, I am innocent.

After the verdict was read in the Simpson case, as the jury was leaving, one of them, I was later told, said, 'We think he probably did it. We just didn't think they proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.'

A trial is not a search for truth. It is a contest and, often, one that produces no winners.

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.

My job as a prosecutor is to do justice. And justice is served when a guilty man is convicted and an innocent man is not.

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

When I was initially charged I still thought I was not guilty because I had followed the rules.

I knew I was coming home, I thought they would consider acquittal, I was disappointed that they didn't.

In politics, there is a distinction, unknown to science, between Truth and Justice.

You can't charge somebody with something they have not done.

It's perfectly obvious that somebody's responsible and somebody's innocent. Otherwise it [justice] makes no sense at all.

Most people fancy themselves innocent of those crimes of which they cannot be convicted.

In America, an acquittal doesn't mean you're innocent, it means you beat the rap. My clients lose even when they win.

In former days, everyone found the assumption of innocence so easy; today we find fatally easy the assumption of guilt.

Courtroom dramas can be boring.

I am innocent of the blood of this just person; see ye to it.

All we can do is keep going up against then as long as Ray is alive because when he dies it will not be possible to establish the truth of his innocence in a court of law.

You have been tried by twelve good men and true, not of your peers but as high above you as heaven is of hell, and they have said you are guilty.

Justice can only be dispensed when you have all the facts in front of you.

We will that all men know we blame not all the lords, nor all those that are about the king's person, nor all gentlemen nor yeomen, nor all men of law, nor all bishops, nor all priests, but all such as may be found guilty by just and true inquiry and by the law.

One of the hardest things to believe is that anyone will abandon the effort to escape a charge of murder. It is extremely important to suspend disbelief on that. If you don't, the story is spoiled.

The prosecutor, who is supposed to carry the burden of proof, really is an author.