Johnnie Cochran Quotes

Ask any experienced defense lawyer: the real risks are for an accused person who is innocent. A guilty defendant has many more options available.

In representing criminal defendants—especially guilty ones—it is often necessary to take the offensive against the government: to put the government on trial for its misconduct.

I actually was a defense attorney first.

Make crime pay. Become a lawyer.

I was in the courtroom prosecuting violent felonies for well over a decade.

I practise law almost every day. Exclusively criminal work these days.

Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.

The States have always borne primary responsibility for operating the machinery of criminal justice within their borders, and adapting it to their peculiar circumstances.

By the time our Constitution was written, jury trials in criminal cases had been in existence in England for several centuries and carried impressive credentials traced by many back to Magna Carta.

The criminal defense attorney is misunderstood if not despised by most of society. It doesn't matter if we believe in our adversarial system and the ideal that everyone charged with a crime is entitled to a vigorous defense. Ideals give away to reality - defense lawyers working loopholes and angles to get their clients off.

My first job out of law school was representing people on death row in North Carolina, where I often saw the impact of hasty prosecutions.

If everyone charged with crimes suddenly exercised his constitutional rights, there would not be enough judges, lawyers, or prison cells to deal with the ensuing tsunami of litigation.

I was a prosecutor for 20 years.

I was interested in getting courtroom experience. When I was a young lawyer, the only way I could get real courtroom experience was in the criminal law field.

I think most defense attorneys know, to some extent, their clients are guilty.

Lawyers claim that their clients have been grossly mistreated, which is what criminal defense lawyers are paid to do.

In a democratic country, when a man is accused, he's accused from a document issued by the public attorney.

My father is a practicing criminal law attorney in the Seattle area.

Everybody has a right to be defended, and every lawyer has a duty to defend people accused. And my office is to defend him, to discuss the accusation point by point, as I think this is a normal step in a democracy.

I was a prosecutor in Brooklyn in the homicide division and then as a senior assistant district attorney.

Not a problem kid or anything like that so when you're in the legal system like that, it's always hard on a person for the first time to go through some things like that.

I don't think the trial practice is dead. But it is very ill. There are some days you could throw a hand grenade down the hall of the Harris County Courthouse and not hit anybody.

The vast majority of A.D.A.s put everything on the line to make sure justice is served. That's what I love about prosecutors and the New York police.

I'm a duty solicitor, so I can't fix someone's life; all I can do is fix the problem I've got in front of my eyes.

I was a prosecutor for many years, I'm a crime victim myself, and I've tried so many cases I don't even know how many anymore.