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date: 15 May 2025

Trials 

see also Justice, Laws
  1. Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?
    defending Mick Jagger after his arrest for cannabis possession
    Anonymous: leader in Times 1 June 1967, written by William Rees-Mogg; see Pope
  2. If ever there was a case of clearer evidence than this of persons acting together, this case is that case.
    William Arabin 1773–1841 English judge: H. B. Churchill Arabiniana (1843)
  3. Trial by jury is more than an instrument of justice and more than one wheel of the constitution: it is the lamp that shows that freedom lives.
    Lord Devlin 1905–92 British judge: Trial By Jury (1956) ch. 6
  4. If this is justice, I am a banana.
    on the libel damages awarded against Private Eye to Sonia Sutcliffe
    Ian Hislop 1960–  English satirical journalist: comment, 24 May 1989
  5. That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hands of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgement of the law, is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.
    Robert H. Jackson 1892–1954 American lawyer and judge: opening statement for the prosecution, before the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, 21 November 1945
  6. We are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.
    of the Supreme Court
    Robert H. Jackson 1892–1954 American lawyer and judge: Brown v. Allen (1953)
  7. You may object that it is not a trial at all; you are quite right, for it is only a trial if I recognize it as such.
    Franz Kafka 1883–1924 Czech novelist: The Trial (1925) ch. 2
  8. The art of cross-examination is not the art of examining crossly. It's the art of leading the witness through a line of propositions he agrees to until he's forced to agree to the one fatal question.
    Clifford Mortimer 1884–1961 English barrister: John Mortimer Clinging to the Wreckage (1982)
  9. Not only did we play the race card, we played it from the bottom of the deck.
    on the defence's conduct of the O. J. Simpson trial
    Robert Shapiro 1942–  American lawyer: interview, 3 October 1995
  10. Asking the ignorant to use the incomprehensible to decide the unknowable.
    on the jury system
    Hiller B. Zobel 1932–  American judge: ‘The Jury on Trial’ in American Heritage July–August 1995