Justice System Quotes

“No amount of me trying to explain myself was doing any good. I didn't even know what was going on inside of me, so how could I have explained it to them?”
― Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.

“The prisons in the United States had long been an extreme reflection of the American system itself: the stark life differences between rich and poor, the racism, the use of victims against one another, the lack of resources of the underclass to speak out, the endless" reforms "that changed little. Dostoevski once said:" The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. "

It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. But when the rich did commit crimes, they often were not prosecuted, and if they were they could get out on bail, hire clever lawyers, get better treatment from judges. Somehow, the jails ended up full of poor black people.”
― Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present

“There is no client as scary as an innocent man."

J. Michael Haller, Criminal Defense Attorney, Los Angeles, 1962.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“Errors do not cease to be errors simply because they’re ratified into law.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly,

“LONDON. Michaelmas Term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in Lincoln’s Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it as big as full-grown snow-flakes — gone into mourning, one might imagine, for the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better; splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another’s umbrellas in a general infection of ill-temper, and losing their foot-hold at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been slipping and sliding since the day broke (if the day ever broke), adding new deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.

Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.

Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy. Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time — as the gas seems to know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.”
― Charles Dickens, Bleak House

“العدالة كلمة قالها أحد الأغبياء فتلقفها ضعفاء هذه المقاطعة، وهي كمفهوم وجدت لتطبّق على الفقراء والمساكين والمعدمين، أولئك الذين لا يمتلكون حيلة، وليس لهم درع تحميهم أو واسطة أو «ظهر » سياسي. أمّا الأقوياء، الأثرياء وأصحاب النفوذ فلا يمكن المسّ بهم أو الاقتراب منهم! حتى يمكننا القول إن العدالة عندنا تعني اقتصاص الأقوياء لما يبغونه وترك الفضلات للفقراء والمساكين!”
― فايز غازي، Fayez Ghazi, أزهار الموت

“I believe[...]that while all human life is sacred there’s nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can trust the legal system implicitly, and that no one but a moron would ever trust the legal system.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Today I wore a pair of faded old jeans and a plain grey baggy shirt. I hadn't even taken a shower, and I did not put on an ounce of makeup. I grabbed a worn out black oversized jacket to cover myself with even though it is warm outside. I have made conscious decisions lately to look like less of what I felt a male would want to see. I want to disappear.”
― Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.

“A president cannot defend a nation if he is not held accountable to its laws.”
― DaShanne Stokes

“You know what my father said about innocent clients?... He said the scariest client a lawyer will ever have is an innocent client. Because if you fuck up and he goes to prison, it'll scar you for life... He said there is no in-between with an innocent client. No negotiation, no plea bargain, no middle ground. There's only one verdict. You have to put an NG up on the scoreboard. There's no other verdict but not guilty."

Levin nodded thoughtfully.

"The bottom line was my old man was a damn good lawyer and he didn't like having innocent clients," I said. "I'm not sure I do, either.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“Intimidated, old traumas triggered, and fearing for my safety, I did what I felt I needed to do.”
― Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.

“Just like freedom, Truth is not cheap. Yet both are worth more than all the gold in the world. But what is freedom, if there is no truth? And what is truth, if there is no freedom? Both are worth fighting for — because one without the other would be hell.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Harsh justice is still justice.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

“I understand now that the only time black people don't feel guilty is when we've actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief.”
― Paul Beatty, The Sellout

“Walter made me understand why we have to reform a system of criminal justice that continues to treat people better if they are rich and guilty than if they are poor and innocent. A system that denies the poor the legal help they need, that makes wealth and status more important than culpability, must be changed. Walter's case taught me that fear and anger are a threat to justice; they can infect a community, a state, or a nation and make us blind, irrational, and dangerous. I reflected on how mass imprisonment has littered the national landscape with carceral monuments of reckless and excessive punishment and ravaged communities with our hopeless willingness to condemn and discard the most vulnerable among us. I told the congregation that Walter's case had taught me that the death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment in this country is,Do we deserve to kill?”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy

“Returns righteous people what's theirs and deprives sinners what isn't theirs.”
― Miguel Ángel Sáez Gutiérrez «Marino», Zori 2ª Parte

“The two men sat silent for a little, and then Lord Peter said:

"D'you like your job?"

The detective considered the question, and replied:

"Yes—yes, I do. I know it to be useful, and I am fitted to it. I do it quite well—not with inspiration, perhaps, but sufficiently well to take a pride in it. It is full of variety and it forces one to keep up to the mark and not get slack. And there's a future to it. Yes, I like it. Why?"

"Oh, nothing," said Peter. "It's a hobby to me, you see. I took it up when the bottom of things was rather knocked out for me, because it was so damned exciting, and the worst of it is, I enjoy it—up to a point. If it was all on paper I'd enjoy every bit of it. I love the beginning of a job—when one doesn't know any of the people and it's just exciting and amusing. But if it comes to really running down a live person and getting him hanged, or even quodded, poor devil, there don't seem as if there was any excuse for me buttin' in, since I don't have to make my livin' by it. And I feel as if I oughtn't ever to find it amusin'. But I do.”
― Dorothy L. Sayers, Whose Body?

“People with low self-confidence and self-esteem often feel nervous about antagonizing others and tend to rate others’ needs more highly than their own.”
― Oscar Auliq-Ice

“I don't believe in God today.

I don't even believe in people.”
― Sarah Crossan, Moonrise

“A traitor to both sides, the ultimate asshole…”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Blue

“Your friends dress like your enemies, and your enemies dress like your friends.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Blue

“Look at that asshole! Not a care in the world! Today, I fish; tomorrow, I blow up a mosque. Smart, hiding in plain sight.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Blue

“...being on the wrong side of a pissing contest is never a good thing.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Blue

“Sarin in Dearborn? Are you shitting me? Jack pounded his desk; his morning coffee spilled all over the burglary file he had been studying.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Blue

“If Jack Dylan was Captain Ahab, Bart Breitner was Moby Dick. Jack felt exhilarated, as Ahab must have felt when he finally encountered the great white. He would approach with caution and test the waters. He was alone, and he sensed extreme danger, but this was a tremendous opportunity that he could not pass up.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Blue

“He told me that if I hung up, he'd do it. He would commit suicide. He told me that if I called the cops he would kill every single one of them and I knew that he had the potential and the means to do it”
― Sierra D. Waters, Debbie.

“Then let’s get to work. Sarin…shit! We must stop these guys…again.”
The men nodded, stone-faced. Was it really déjà vu all over again?”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Blue

“For having been educated in a convent, she knew nothing of the customs or manners of the world; and found it difficult to understand that among a people piquing themselves on their liberty, it was the custom to shut a man up in perpetual confinement, to enable him to pay his debts.”
― Charlotte Turner Smith, Ethelinde, or the Recluse of the Lake

“The bad things that happen to us don't define us. It's just important sometimes that people understand where we're coming from.”
― Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy

“Twenty-five elite law enforcement officers against six racist assholes. Four to one; pretty good odds.”
― Mark M. Bello, Betrayal In Blue