Witness Credibility Quotes

In the Belgian air force a general supposedly saw a UFO, tracked it with his plane, photographed it with his wing cameras. And I believe it because I said to myself why would this person, not getting paid for this, do it unless it actually happened or he thought it happened.

Practically, every defense lawyer knows that the jury desperately wants to hear from the defendant and that the only reason not to put him on the stand is that he is soooo guilty that every answer he gives after his name will eradicate any shred of reasonable doubt.

In this era of mass incarceration, the police shouldn't be trusted any more than any other witness, perhaps less so.

Prosecutors have absolutely no control over what witnesses say when they leave the grand jury room.

You know I took an oath to tell the truth when I took the witness stand.

Trust a witness in all matters in which neither his self-interest, his passions, his prejudices, nor the love of the marvellous is strongly concerned. When they are involved, require corroborative evidence in exact proportion to the contravention of probability by the thing testified.

We cannot afford to have the confidence of the public, victims, and witnesses in our justice system undermined because the wrong people are being found guilty and the real criminals are wandering the streets.

You never know how much a man can't remember until he is called as a witness.

Laymen ought not to be accused save by dependable and lawful accusers and witnesses.

The Roswell incident, for instance, had over three hundred witnesses - some describing the bodies, some the craft, some the military procedures. Were they all perpetuating their own lives in a myth?

The conspiracy community regularly seizes on one slip of the tongue, misunderstanding, or slight discrepancy to defeat twenty pieces of solid evidence; accepts one witness of theirs, even if he or she is a provable nut, as being far more credible than ten normal witnesses on the other side; treats rumors, even questions, as the equivalent of proof; leaps from the most minuscule of discoveries to the grandest of conclusions; and insists that the failure to explain everything perfectly negates all that is explained.

When I testified in front of Congress, I know that I was testifying under oath and I told the truth.

I'm convinced from what I know of Vernon Bundy that his testimony was truthful.

Too often I have seen intelligent, experienced witnesses demolished before these [congressional] committees because they have not taken the trouble to do their homework.... [The witness] is confronted with an independent panel of specialized experts who usually possess vastly more experience than he.

Those who think the information brought out at a criminal trial is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth are fools. Prosecuting or defending a case is nothing more than getting to those people who will talk for your side, who will say what you want said.

In trials of fact, by oral testimony, the proper inquiry is not whether is it possible that the testimony may be false, but whether there is sufficient probability that it is true.

I don't know why it's so hard to believe women. You to go Saudi Arabia and you need two women to testify against a man. Here you need 25.

Well, you know, one lawyer says I'm the only witness and I'm not credible. Another lawyer says this witness - there's tons of evidence that's been available for years.

The truth is that nearly everybody is right about some things and wrong about most things; and if a man's testimony is not to be taken until he is right on every subject, witnesses will be extremely scarce.

Any perjury case is a tough case. You just don't go on 'he said-she said.' You have to find corroborating evidence.

Lawyers hold that there are two kinds of particularly bad witnesses--a reluctant witness, and a too-willing witness.

Lying under oath, and encouraging lies under oath, does go to the very heart and soul of what courts do. If we say we don't care, let's forget about courts, and we'll just have other ways of figuring out how to handle disputes.