Criminal Procedure Quotes

I spent my time trying to understand grand jury procedure - a topic about which I never before had the slightest interest.

The innocent man is always eager to give his explanation and does so at the first opportunity, and it is always to his interest so to do. But the guilty is now enabled by the law to remain mute, to learn the evidence against him, to concoct his defense pending trial, and to come into court fully acquainted with the case against him, while the district attorney only knows that the defendant has pronounced the two words "not guilty.

Asking questions is an essential part of police investigation. In the ordinary sense a police officer is free to ask a person for identification without implicating the Fourth Amendment.

In all candor, the Court fails to perceive any reason for suspending the power of courts to get evidence and rule on questions of privilege in criminal matters simply because it is the president of the United States who holds the evidence.

U.S. attorneys have taught me a lot over the years, and in the Southern district of Florida, they have been to me partners.

I can't be under arrest now... I don't have time.

I don't really retain much from the first couple semesters of my criminal justice studies.

I've learned a long time ago if you don't have anything to hide, you shouldn't be pleading the Fifth, and most Americans get it.

'It is my duty to warn you that it will be used against you,' cried the Inspector, with the magnificent fair play of the British criminal law.

Criminal justice is about respecting the law and being respected by the law so there is a fundamental respect issue here.

Officers are taught to use all the tricks and lies that courts permit within the scope of the Fifth Amendment's shield against self-incrimination.

The civil forfeiture law - if something so devoid of due process can be dignified as law - is an incentive for perverse behavior: Predatory government agencies get to pocket the proceeds from property they seize from Americans without even charging them with, let alone convicting them of, crimes. Criminals are treated better than this because they lose the fruits of their criminality only after being convicted.

The idea that the police cannot ask questions of the person that knows most about the crime is an infamous decision.

The Constitution does not trust judges to make determinations of criminal guilt.

There is no requirement that police stop a person who enters a police station and states that he wishes to confess a crime or a person who calls the police to offer a confession because volunteered statements of any kind are not barred by the 5th Amendment.

We have far more plea bargains in our system than we do trials.

I actually was a defense attorney first.

You do not have to incriminate yourself. But once you assert your innocence, and once you say you didn't do anything wrong, you can't then use the Fifth Amendment to say, 'I'm not answering questions.'

It is anomalous to hold that in order to convict a man the police cannot extract by force what is in his mind, but can extract what is in his stomach.

Martha Stewart showed up at Manhattan FBI Headquarters to have her finger prints taken and pose for a mug shot. Then Martha explained how to get ink off your fingers using seltzer water and lemon juice.

The States have always borne primary responsibility for operating the machinery of criminal justice within their borders, and adapting it to their peculiar circumstances.

I was married to a law student, and I used to attend classes with him at Georgetown University Law Center. Being of dramatic bent, I was drawn mainly to Criminal law and Evidence classes. A just-beginning writer, I would find an empty chair and listen, mesmerized, to the lectures.

One of the main goals of the reforms is to broaden the rights of Mexicans. We needed a standard criminal code, the same rule of law all over the country. Instead of having different laws in every state, there will be the same law all over the country — at the federal and the local level — for any criminal procedure.