Bill James Quotes

Trial by television is ... foreign to our system.

We should not televise trials. There's only one purpose for a criminal trial. It's to determine whether or not the defendant committed the crime. Anything that interferes or has the potential of interfering with that should automatically be prohibited.

People constantly complain to me about news coverage of criminal cases. 'What happened to the presumption of innocence?' they ask at almost every turn. Well, I'm tired of it.

Whatever disagreement there may be as to the scope of the phrase "due process of law" there can be no doubt that it embraces the fundamental conception of a fair trial, with opportunity to be heard.

I know the pundits and the news media have carried a lot of commentary about cameras in the courtroom, and there's a lot of controversy about it as a result of the Simpson case. But I have not had enough time to step back and enough time to evaluate that.

The Petersons have not come forward in the press. Apparently they feel the media bears a large responsibility for Scott's conviction. It may be a while before we hear anything from them.

No one can just file a charge and go directly to a jury trial. That just cannot happen.

People are terrified for their own reputations. They want the press on their side.

It still surprises me when I find something in any North Carolina newspaper that isn't mad at me about something.

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

Let me make the newspapers, and I care not what is preached in the pulpit or what is enacted in Congress.

Wouldn't it be better to have a watertight law designed to catch the guilty, rather than a press release law designed to catch the headlines?

When you go into court you are putting your fate into the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.

There's always such a rush to judgment. It makes a fair trial hard to get.

The news is what it is. It's going to be good, it's going to be positive, it's going to be negative. It's going to have all sorts of effects on candidates always.

I did not see any major issues other than the jury substitutions. I can't know whether there's a problem there, until I read the transcript from the in-chambers conference, when those jurors were excused.

The trial by jury is a trial by 'the country,' in contradistinction to a trial by the government. The jurors are drawn by lot from the mass of the people, for the very purpose of having all classes of minds and feelings, that prevail among the people at large, represented in the jury.

When it comes to those who are accused and their right to defend themselves, it is perfectly reasonable to expect relevant evidence to be made public, and I am in favour of open justice.

Look at the Chandra Levy case. It's become a Star Chamber. The major networks, the cable networks, they're being prosecutors. They're judges and jurors and executioners. Well, c'mon, that's ridiculous. But they're doing it.

Surveys have shown going back as far as you and I can remember that people have perceived a leftward tilt in the basic coverage that they get on TV news.

To exclude all jurors who would be in the slightest way affected by the prospect of the death penalty would be to deprive the defendant of the impartial jury to which he or she is entitled under the law.

The [TV evening] news usually defines the candidate for the public.

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, will be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

To say that the newspaper press represents public opinion is to administer insult to intelligent men. It is the property of speculators, political leaders, large contractors and railway directors.

Television is the medium through which 80 percent of the people see their leaders….They get all their information about their government and their leaders from television.