Joseph Wambaugh Quotes

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

• 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.

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

• The time has come for professional jurors.

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

• 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.

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

• 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.

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

• 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.

  Joseph Wambaugh

• 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.

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

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

  Joseph Wambaugh

Joseph Wambaugh (23)

Birth:	22nd January, 1937
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Police Officer, Writer

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Today's Anniversary - 15th May

Births

• 1936 - Ralph Steadman
• 1689 - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
• 1902 - Richard Joseph Daley
• 1951 - Jonathan Richman
• 1963 - Joseph Prince

Deaths

• 1978 - Robert Menzies
• 1925 - Nelson A. Miles
• 1949 - Mary Antin
• 2008 - Willis Lamb
• 1986 - Theodore H. White