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I am not on trial here, Mr. Chairman. This committee is on trial here before the American people. Let us get that straight.
--
(Directed at Committee Chairman, J. Parnell Thomas), testimony before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) of the US House of Representatives (October 27, 1947).

 

John Howard Lawson

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The major flaw in the American justice system is that appeals focus only on procedural errors, and one's guilt or innocence is never again an issue after the original trial, even if that trial reached the wrong result.

 

F. Lee Bailey

 

Moreover, there is this completely false trial. I would participate wholeheartedly in a trial if it were to determine the guilt for 5 million murdered people and the guilt for the atrocities. But I see in this trial endless other things brought out and I have the feeling that in the shadow of the guilt of these murders the German people shall be considered guilty of everything, and in the shadow of this guilt the Americans, English, French, and especially the Russians will want to get rid of their own dirty linen.

 

Hans Fritzsche

 

For some disputes, trials will be the only means, but for many claims, trial by adversarial contest must go the way of the ancient trial by battle and blood. Our system is too costly, too painful, too destructive, too inefficient for a truly civilized people.

 

Warren E. Burger

 

The trial of Jesus of Nazareth, the trial and rehabilitation of Joan of Arc, any one of the witchcraft trials in Salem during 1691, the Moscow trials of 1937 during which Stalin destroyed all of the founders of the 1924 Soviet Revolution, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial of 1920 through 1927 — there are many trials such as these in which the victim was already condemned to death before the trial took place, and it took place only to cover up the real meaning: the accused was to be put to death. These are trials in which the judge, the counsel, the jury, and the witnesses are the criminals, not the accused. For any believer in capital punishment, the fear of an honest mistake on the part of all concerned is cited as the main argument against the final terrible decision to carry out the death sentence. There is the frightful possibility in all such trials as these that the judgment has already been pronounced and the trial is just a mask for murder.

 

Katherine Anne Porter

 

None of these strictures, however, should inhibit any one of us, in his individual capacity, from declaring himself on the issues of the trial and its fairness … So in spite of my insistence on the limits of my official capacity, I personally want to say that I am appalled and ashamed that things should have come to such a pass in this country that I am skeptical of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the United States. In large part this atmosphere has been created by police actions and prosecutions against the Panthers in many parts of the country. It is also one more inheritance from centuries of racial discrimination and oppression…. The first contribution to the fairness of the trial which anyone can make is to cool rather than heat up the atmosphere in which the trial will be held.

 

Kingman Brewster