Jury selection is strictly an emotional process. They're looking for people they can manipulate. Both sides are.

No one I know of has ever had this experience-where you had to sit and wait and wait for a DNA test to come back just so you can write the last page of the book.

The time has come for professional jurors.

The Onion Field made a real writer. And then I knew it was over, I couldn't be a cop anymore.

You've got people who are looking at DNA evidence and other evidence like that and they're ignoring it.

What is it about the component of fire? People have written about it. People have wondered about it.

Today, lawyers are attacking more; they're attacking everything. A good example is the O.J. Simpson case.

I enjoy adapting my own work, or anybody's work. I like to adapt books.

When I interview people accused of capital offenses, I never even ask if they did it. I would consider that unprofessional.

The O.J. Simpson case, they had no understanding of that DNA evidence, and didn't want to.

Civil servants take forever to do anything.

What I didn't know was that if I didn't stand with my back to the wall, Hollywood people would unscrew my ass and sell it down the river.

As a cop, I dealt with every kind of bum and criminal. They all have more integrity than some Hollywood people.

If you take 67 brush fires times 10 years, that's almost 700 right there. Those brush fires are incredibly dangerous, all those homes going down proved that.

I hadn't done anything in six years; I was just vegetating.

I certainly believe it's over for the jury system, but we won't admit it for a while.

Probably 95 percent of the things that are written never get on the screen.

When I wrote The Onion Field, I realized that my first two novels were just practice.

Every time I write a nonfiction book I get sued.

Jury selection is strictly an emotional process. They're looking for people they can manipulate. Both sides are.

I'm sure I took some licks at the system, and at trials and lawyers in general. I've seen enough of them for so many years both as a cop and a defendant in defamation cases.

The serial arsonist is the most difficult to apprehend because the evidence is burned up.

I enjoy doing the research of nonfiction; that gives me some pleasure, being a detective again.

The Onion Field, that one got pretty close to me because I was a cop when it happened. I saw some of the indifference that my police department showed to the surviving officer.

Civil servants take forever to do anything.

I am finally glad to see that the jury is looking at me.

I have fully cooperated with the investigation and before the grand jury, and I'm quite confident at the end of the day that we'll know what facts are in this particular case.

The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.

Trial by jury. Live wherever you can make a living. How could a government based on such principles fail?

In the courtroom, it's where a lawyer really becomes an actor. There's a very fine line between delivering a monologue in a play and delivering a monologue to a jury. I've always felt that way - I've been in a lot of courtrooms. The best lawyers are really theatrical.

A grand jury hears only one side - that of the prosecutor.

The jury has the right to determine both the law and the facts.

I lost court cases and misdemeanor juries, but of felony jury trials I was successful 105 of 106 times.

Ending racial discrimination in jury selection can be accomplished only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely.

My parents wanted me to be a lawyer. But I don't think I would have been very happy. I'd be in front of the jury singing.

Yeah, I lost court cases and misdemeanor juries, but of felony jury trials I was successful 105 of 106 times.

We look in... Germany for a superstar. We began with 10,000 people, which applied. From these 10,000, 100 was selected. The jury is unbelievably competent.

We were right about the slush fund. But Sloan did not testify about it to the Grand Jury.

The values of confidentiality of matters occurring before the grand jury is very important.

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.

If you violate Nature's laws you are your own prosecuting attorney, judge, jury, and hangman.

I have great faith in the jury system.

Getting out of jury duty is easy. The trick is to say you're prejudiced against all races.

To escape jury duty in England, wear a bowler hat and carry a copy of the Daily telegraph.

I spent my time trying to understand grand jury procedure - a topic about which I never before had the slightest interest.

There are two other SLA members who have been granted immunity and then also, one of the SLA members had confessed to two other people, and those people, I'm sure, will be called as witnesses, as they were at the grand jury.

Usually when attorneys are assembling a jury, they're just looking for sheep that are easily impressed.

A fox should not be on the jury at a goose's trial.

It would be enough for me to have the system of a jury of twelve versus the system of one judge as a basis for preferring the U.S. to the Soviet Union. I would prefer the country you can leave to the country you cannot.