Veritaserum and Ministry Trials

I've always wondered this, but why would the Ministry never use Veritaserum to establish whether or not a suspected criminal (on trial let's say) was telling the truth? And I don't mean for every trial, but for the really big ones such as finding out who's a Death Eater and who's not.

For one, those who they know are Death Eaters could have been given veritaserum and then forced to tell the truth on a number of things, including who else was a Death Eater, ect ect.

Also, they could have found out Sirius was innocent when he tells Dumbledore what really happened. I know he originally went to Azkaban without trial because of how overwhelming the evidence was against him, but couldn't Dumbledore have insisted on using it on him once he escaped? I mean, he uses it in the next book against Barty Crouch Jr. so he obviously doesn't have any qualms against doing so.

I don't know, it just seems weird that it's not used more. I know it takes a while to brew but if it's only used at big cases that's really not all that often and they wouldn't need a lot of it. And maybe they have some sort of restrictions on it's use (obviously they must have sense it's potentially dangerous) but surely those restrictions wouldn't apply to a murder case or something else along those lines?

And I was looking in Half Blood Prince and in the chapter "A Sluggish Memory" it says, "So the Ministry called upon Morfin. They did not need to question him, to use Veritaserum or Legilimency. He admitted to the murder on the spot, giving details only the murderer could know". This implies that they do infact use it for cases in which a murder occurs.

So any ideas why we haven't heard of it being used in trials? Especially ones like the torture of Neville's parents?

I think it's the fact that they don't want to force someone to tell against their will. It would make the ministry look bad if they couldnt do something without taking someone's word.

Hmm...I guess, but even so, it sounds like they've used it for cases before and you'd think someone would have the right to demand they take veritaserum so everyone knows they're telling the truth. Wouldn't that cut down on wrongly imprisoned citizens and catch more people?

You have to remember, this is when Voldemort started getting powerful. Everyone was quick to jump to the conclusion that everyone was dangerous. No one would listen to someone who was actually telling the truth because of the Veritaserum. They all wanted order and wanted those who were Death Eaters in jail, even if it meant accusing someone who was innocence.

Hmmm...that's a good point...but still, why wouldn't they ues it on Karkaroff when they were trying to get information out of him? Then they wouldn't even have had to offer him a deal out of Azkaban and they still would have gotten what they wanted.