Criminal cases require strategy, and prosecutors should attempt to prove only what can be proved.

I think that one of the motivating factors was in my last year of law school: we had a competition, and I won the competition; it was judged by several of the federal judges at the time. I got a tremendous amount of encouragement to pursue litigation from them at the time.

Our constitutionally-based criminal justice system places a high value on protecting the innocent. Among its central tenets is the idea that it is better to let a guilty person go free than to convict someone without evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.

In court, jurors are admonished by the judge at every recess not to discuss the case or form any opinions until the case is given to them for deliberations. Of course, there is no such limitation on the public.

In Italy, for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had 500 years of democracy and peace - and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Consciousness permits us to develop the instruments of culture - morality and justice, religion, art, economics and politics, science and technology. Those instruments allow us some measure of freedom in the confrontation with nature.

But the Western countries that link their partnership with the poorest countries with respect for democracy also have to consider that they have obligations towards these countries.

I can't afford to be indifferent to politics, but I don't have personal ambitions.