Ann Rule Quotes

I'm thrilled to have a completely new audience that I can get from Court TV, without it being my own trial. That was the only other way I would have gotten it.

The audience that storms the box-office of the theater to gain entrance to a sensational show is small and sleepy compared with the throng that crashes the courthouse door when something concerning real life and death is to be laid bare to the public.

I tend to watch a little TV... Court TV, once in a while. Some of the cases I get interested in.

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

I've led a grand jury.

I think trials are inherently dramatic and interesting and are always going to be part of the news.

I find these dramas fascinating - it's a world that many of us fortunately don't dip into. The legal system is all around us, but the majority of us don't have to go into a court, so it's a way into another world that is unusual.

A criminal trial is like a Russian novel: it starts with exasperating slowness as the characters are introduced to a jury, then there are complications in the form of minor witnesses, the protagonist finally appears and contradictions arise to produce drama, and finally as both jury and spectators grow weary and confused the pace quickens, reaching its climax in passionate final argument.

The circumstances seemed to be simple; but they who understood such matters declared that the duration of a trial depended a great deal more on the public interest felt in the matter than upon its own nature.

In America, an acquittal doesn't mean you're innocent, it means you beat the rap. My clients lose even when they win.

Professionalism in law has brought us the O.J. Simpson case in lieu of justice.

If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.

I enjoyed the courtroom as just another stage but not so amusing as Broadway.

I'd love to do a court-room drama. I loved 'Ally McBeal.' That was one of the main reasons I went to law school.

Judges in our systems decide on concrete facts and not abstract issues.

The judge must then address to the prisoners the following sentence: We, the judge, etc., do assign to you,------, such and such a day for the continuation of the tortures, that from your own mouth the truth may be heard, and that the whole may be recorded by the notary.

Courts are places where the ending is written first and all that precedes is simply vaudeville.

After the verdict was read in the Simpson case, as the jury was leaving, one of them, I was later told, said, 'We think he probably did it. We just didn't think they proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.'

My sentence formally was imposed on my mothers 50th Birthday January 24th 1983. The jury recommended it July 1st 1982.

Being on a grand jury felt like attending a series of hangings in a legal Wild West. Hands up for a true bill. Hands up for a dismissal. A show of hands to save a life, or to end it.

I loved my job... then the Simpson case happened.

I can write dramas that are about inside and outside the courtroom.

The law itself is on trial quite as much as the cause which is to be decided.

The jury passing on the prisoner's life may in the sworn twelve have a thief or two guiltier than him they try.

I've never hanged a man. It is the law that has done it.