[Jury selection] is best based upon seat-of-the-pants instincts, which are undoubtedly crudely stereotypical and may in many cases be hopelessly mistaken.
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Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986) (dissenting opinion)William Rehnquist
» William Rehnquist - all quotes »
I disagreed with the grand jury on [Tawana] Brawley. I believed there was enough evidence to go to trial. The grand jury said there wasn’t. OK, fine. Do I have a right to disagree with the grand jury? Many Americans believe O.J. Simpson was guilty. A jury said he wasn’t. So I have as much right to question a jury as they do. Does it make somebody a racist? No! They just disagreed with the jury. So did I.
Al Sharpton
The players have got to know that we are not firing by the seat of our pants.
Phil Brown
The day of manipulating a jury is absolutely gone, if there ever was such a day. Cases are won through preparation, dragging the facts into the courtroom. The lawyer excavates the facts, and the more he digs, the more certain is he to win; and then he can pound upon the facts and the emotional appeal-that's the way of persuasion. But to play clever with a jury when you don't have the facts leaves them cold. They resent it.
Louis Nizer
Men always made crude jokes about people pissing their pants with fear, but in Sokolov’s experience, shitting the pants was more common if it was a straightforward matter of extreme emotional stress. Pants pissing was completely unproductive and suggested a total breakdown of elemental control. Pants shitting, on the other hand, voided the bowels and thereby made blood available to the brain and the large muscle groups that otherwise would have gone to the lower-priority activity of digestion. Sokolov could have forgiven Peter for shitting his pants, but if he had pissed his pants, then it really would have been necessary to get rid of him.
Neal Stephenson
[I] believe that our people’s traditional belief in the right of trial by jury is in perilous decline. That decline is bound to be confirmed, and indeed accelerated, by the repeated spectacle of a man’s going to his death because a judge found that an aggravating factor existed. We cannot preserve our veneration for the protection of the jury in criminal cases if we render ourselves callous to the need for that protection by regularly imposing the death penalty without it.
Antonin Scalia
Rehnquist, William
Reid, Harry
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