Jury Trials Quotes

“The Defendant: I am pleading guilty your honors but I'm doing it because I think it would be a waste of money to have a trial over five dollars worth of crack. What I really need is a drug program because I want to turn my life around and the only reason I was doing what I was doing on the street was to support my habit. The habit has to be fed your honors as you know and I believe in working for my money. I could be out there robbing people but I'm not and I've always worked even though I am disabled. And not always at this your honors, I used to be a mail carrier back in the day but then I started using drugs and that was all I wanted to do. So I'm taking this plea to save the city of New York and the taxpayers money because I can't believe that the DA, who I can see is a very tall man, would take to trial a case involving five dollars worth of crack, especially knowing how much a trial of that nature would cost. But I still think that I should get a chance to do a drug program because I've never been given that chance in any of my cases and the money that will be spent keeping me in jail could be spent addressing my real problem which is that I like, no need, to smoke crack every day and every chance I get, and if I have to point people to somebody who's selling the stuff so I can get one dollar and eventually save up enough to buy a vial then smoke it immediately and start saving up for my next one that I'll gladly do that, and I'll do it even though I know it could land me in jail for years because the only thing that matters at that moment is getting my next vial and I am not a Homo-sapiens-sexual your honors but if I need money to buy crack I will suck. . . .”
― Sergio De La Pava, A Naked Singularity

“Emotions are reserved for juries and, in that case, a good lawyer can really lay them on when the time is right, better than the best Academy Award winning actor”
― Kenneth Eade, Predatory Kill

“Mr Judge, Jury & Executioner of Micah Xavier Johnson‬ needs to go to jail as soon as possible – he is a danger to civilized society.”
― Steven Magee

“Why was it sensible for Americans to transubstantiate a convention into the virtual embodiment of the People? After all, as with an ordinary legislative assembly, a convention assembly may improve the ultimate quality of public deliberation, see, e.g., THE FEDERALIST No. 55, at 342 (J. Madison), but only by excluding most citizens, thereby raising fiduciary/agency problems. An answer based on organization theory/incentive analysis might focus on how a ratification convention is structured differently from an ordinary legislature in ways that enhance monitoring and improve public accountability. First, the People select convention delegates in a special election. Second, delegates are generally convened to consider a single issue (ratification). Third and related, the basic choice set is binary (yes-no), reducing agenda manipulation problems and decreasing the monitoring problems that exist in an ordinary legislature with virtually infinite possibilities of side deals and vote trading. Fourth, conventions immediately disband and disperse among the People, reducing the problem of legislators entrenching themselves and developing their own institutional perspectives. Finally, a convention enhances a sense of public-spiritedness and individual moral responsibility among both voters and delegates. Calling a "convention" signals to all concerned that the polity is entering a high-stakes moment when basic ground rules will be hammered out. Interestingly, criminal juries (deciding the single issue of individual guilt or innocence) possess many more convention attributes than do ordinary legislatures.”
― Akhil Reed Amar, Of Sovereignty and Federalism