You never know when you lose a case whether it was because the facts were against you, or because the judges had already made up their minds, or if you could have done something differently.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see.
Every time you make a guess of what a judge is going to do... you're wrong, so I try to stay away from that.
All judges have cases that touch our passions deeply, but we all struggle constantly with remaining impartial.
Judges are real people with real-world experiences and backgrounds. We cannot expect them to erase their experiences and backgrounds from the mindset that informs their judicial decision-making.
One thing I know from personal experience, judges hate it when parties talk publicly about their cases. There are a lot of things about our criminal legal system that need to be changed, and this is just one of them. Prosecutors know how to play the press. Most defendants don't.
The work of deciding cases goes on every day in hundreds of courts throughout the land. Any judge, one might suppose, would find it easy to describe the process which he had followed a thousand times and more. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
I hate second-guessing other lawyers because I know that I've tried and lost cases, and somebody could sit there and say, 'Should have done it this way,' and they'd have been right.
I have been a judge for 15 years and I've made up my own mind during all that time.
I really try at least to come back and answer the question as to whether that was really the best way to do that and was I really thinking straight and how did my opponents behave and how did the judges behave was needed.
Judges need to restrict themselves to the proper resolution of the case before them. They need to avoid the temptation to set broad policy.
No opposing quotes found.