Best Criminal Law Famous Quotes & Sayings
42 Best Criminal Law Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation.
If a juror feels that the statute involved in any criminal offence is unfair, or that it infringes upon the defendant's natural god-given unalienable or constitutional rights, then it is his duty to affirm that the offending statute is really no law at all and that the violation of it is no crime at all, for no one is bound to obey an unjust law.— Harlan F. Stone
There has been no clearer principle of English or American constitutional law than that, in criminal cases, it is not only the power and duty of juries to judge what are the facts, what is the law, and what is the moral intent of the accused; but that it is also their power, and their primary and paramount duty, to judge the justice of the law, and to hold all laws invalid, that are, in their opinion, unjust or oppressive, and find all persons guiltless in violating, or resisting the execution of, such laws.— Lysander Spooner
Convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i.e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand. This is so not because such confessions are unlikely to be true but because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law: that ours is an accusatorial and not an inquisitorial system a system in which the State must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured and may not by coercion prove its charges against an accused out of his own mouth.— Felix Frankfurter
As he was about to press the button to shut the doors, a young woman stepped in. She had that sort of beauty that deserved to be prosecuted for appearing without notice. Professor Khupe was confident that an appropriate law existed for such a purpose. However, no prosecutor could remain undistracted for long enough to find the said law in the criminal code. The young lady would enjoy a life of impunity.— Taona Dumisani Chiveneko
Is not this insanity plea becoming rather common? Is it not so common that the reader confidently expects to see it offered in every criminal case that comes before the courts? ... Really, what we want now, is not laws against crime, but a law against insanity.— Mark Twain
Policemen and laws can never replace customs, traditions and moral values as a means for regulating human behavior. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. Our increased reliance on laws to regulate behavior is a measure of how uncivilized we've become.— D. Todd Christofferson
I rather doubt he had the sense to see the truth: that there are wounds worse than fatal, which the law's little binary distinctions-guilty/innocent, criminal/victim-cannot fathom, let alone fix. The law is a hammer, not a scalpel.— William Landay
I approach the creation-evolution dispute not as a scientist but as a problem of law, which means among other things that I know something about the ways that words are used in arguments. What first drew my attention to the question was the way the rules of argument seemed to be structured to make it impossible to question whether what we are being told about evolution is really true. For example, the Academy's rule against negative argument automatically eliminates the possibility that science has not discovered how complex organisms could have developed. However wrong the current answer may be, it stands until a better answer arrives. It is as if a criminal defendant were not allowed to present an alibi unless he could also show who did commit the crime.— Phillip E. Johnson
Instead, she found her argument in the "doctrine of necessity," an idea established in common law that in certain limited circumstances, which no parliament would ever care to define, it was permissible to break the criminal law to prevent a greater evil.— Ian McEwan
If we are in a position to affect the happiness or suffering of others, we have ethical responsibilities toward them2 - and many of these responsibilities are so grave as to become matters of civil and criminal law. Taking— Sam Harris
A 1670 revision of the criminal code found yet another use for salt in France. To enforce the law against suicide, it was ordered that the bodies of people who took their own lives be salted, brought before a judge, and sentenced to public display. Nor could the accused escape their day in court by dying in the often miserable conditions of the prisons. They too would be salted and put on trial. Breton historians have discovered that in 1784 in the town of Cornouaille, Maurice LeCorre had died in prison and was ordered salted for trial. But due to some bureaucratic error, the corpse did not get a trial date and was found by a prison guard more than seven years later, not only salted but fermented in beer, at which point it was buried without trial.— Mark Kurlansky
The relevant question is not whether back then a few extraordinary individuals could overcome a system strongly weighted against them or whether today an admittedly far greater number requiring far less talent can succeed. The real question is whether it's harder for the people in this audience to succeed be they extraordinary, average, or below average. If it is, and I think it obvious that it is, then that's untenable in a country that purports to provide equal opportunity for all. Now of course you'll dispute my claim that it is more difficult to succeed for them. You say the battle's over. I say not only is it not over but you yourself are stationed on the frontline of the battle and have been all these years. This room and the criminal justice system as a whole is the frontline. This is where modern-day segregation lives on.— Sergio De La Pava
As long as I'm sitting in the chair, there's not going to be any Jew appointed to that court. [No Jew] can be right on the criminal-law issue.— Richard M. Nixon
Whenever you're going after something that belongs to you, anyone who's depriving you of the right to have it is a criminal. Understand that. Whenever you are going after something that is yours, you are within your legal rights to lay claim to it. And anyone who puts forth any effort to deprive you of that which is yours, is breaking the law, is a criminal.— Malcolm X
The proliferation of right-to-carry laws throughout the states has drawn plaintive complaints from the criminal element. They feel that it makes their profession too dangerous when the streets are full of "civilians" who may or may not be armed. Poor babies!— Jeff Cooper
My father taught me to love detective fiction writers such as Raymond Chandler. When I decided to have a hard-boiled detective series I did a lot of studying before I wrote the first book. I learned police procedure, the California criminal law, and many areas outside my expertise.— Sue Grafton
Well, did he do it?"— Michael Connelly
She always asked the irrelevant question. It didn't matter in terms of the strategy of the case whether the defendant "did it" or not. What mattered was the evidence against him
the proof
and if and how it could be neutralized. My job was to bury the proof, to color the proof a shade of gray. Gray was the color of reasonable doubt.
It's just the stupidest law possible ... You're just making criminals out of people who aren't engaged in criminal activity. And we're spending zillions of dollars trying to fight a war we can't win! We could make zillions, just legalize it and tax it like we do liquor. It's stupid.— Morgan Freeman
The Nuremberg Trial of the German war criminals was tacitly based on the recognition of the principle: criminal actions cannot be excused if committed on government orders; conscience supersedes the authority of the law of the state.— Albert Einstein
'It is my duty to warn you that it will be used against you,' cried the Inspector, with the magnificent fair play of the British criminal law.— Arthur Conan Doyle
If the law can be broken it will. Anyone who breaks the law is a risk. You can break the law. So you see, I have to take you in for questioning. This produce stand has an ominous future.— Benson Bruno
We have secrets, and we have the same secrets that criminals have. Sometimes the only difference between a criminal and a law-abiding citizen is that somebody found out the criminal's secret.— Jane Velez-Mitchell
American citizens are instrumental in carrying on a traffic in enslaved Africans, equally in violation of the laws of humanity and in defiance of those of their own country. The same just and benevolent motives which produced interdiction in force against this criminal conduct will doubtless be felt by Congress in devising further means of suppressing the evil.— James Madison
Every time the liberals pass a bill - I don't care what it involves - they stick criminal sanctions on it. They don't feel there is any way people are going to keep a law unless they can put them in jail.— Pat Robertson
It's funny that they've called homosexuality a crime ... At this rate, everyone will be a criminal.— Kangana Ranaut
It is urged that the use of the masculine pronouns he, his, and him in all the constitutions and laws, is proof that only men were meant to be included in their provisions. If you insist on this version of the letter of the law, we shall insist that you be consistent and accept the other horn of the dilemma, which would compel you to exempt women from taxation for the support of the government and from penalties for the violation of laws. There is no she or her or hers in the tax laws, and this is equally true of all the criminal laws.— Susan B. Anthony
Drugs, hard. Under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, the law was changed in the United Kingdom to ensure that the production and supply of dangerous drugs should henceforth be in the hands of criminal organisations. Some people have argued that this is not an ideal arrangement.— William Donaldson
Every court of criminal justice must have the power of correcting the greatest and dangerous of all abuses of the forms of law - that of the protracted imprisonment of the accused, untried, perhaps not intended ever to be tried, it may be, not informed of the nature of the charge against him, or the name of the accuser.— David Hume
Muhammad professed to derive from Heaven, and he has inserted in the Koran, not only a body of religious doctrines, but political maxims, civil and criminal laws, and theories of science. The gospel, on the contrary, only speaks of the general relations of men to God and to each other - beyond which it inculcates and imposes no point of faith. This alone, besides a thousand other reasons, would suffice to prove that the former of these religions will never long predominate in a cultivated and democratic age, whilst the latter is destined to retain its sway at these as at all other periods.— Alexis De Tocqueville
The reason I like the criminal justice system is there aren't Republican or Democrat victims or police officers or prosecutors. It's about respect for the rule of law!— Trey Gowdy
In our civilization there are fearful hours - such are those when the criminal law pronounces shipwreck upon a man. What a mournful moment is that in which society withdraws itself and gives up a thinking being forever.— Victor Hugo
everything in the area of law enforcement, including criminal law, has at one time or another been handled by the private sector quite adequately, and in some places it's occurring even today. The second reason is that in fact the law and law enforcement are not public goods. Public goods are supposed to be goods that everyone has equal access to and that the private sector will not provide. As I said, the private sector does provide these things, and furthermore the idea of equal access to justice is just not true. We have scarce resources being used in law enforcement and adjudication and prosecution and in punishment, and so the use of these resources for one thing means they are not being effectively used for something else. There are tradeoffs. The vast majority of crimes that are reported to police are never resolved. The vast majority of crimes committed are never reported to police. So the belief that law and law enforcement are public goods simply doesn't stand up to reality.— Anonymous
Once or twice in my career I feel that I have done more real harm by my discovery of the criminal than ever he had done by his crime. I have learned caution now, and I had rather play tricks with the law of England than with my own conscience.— Arthur Conan Doyle
Nixon clearly broke the law in the cover up of Watergate and hush money payments. That was all criminal activity. With these guys, we're not talking about the kind of common crimes that Nixon committed. I can't tell you whether they are technically breaking the law, but basically, the American government has been hijacked by neoconservatives. They are taking an awful lot of national security operations into the White House.— Seymour Hersh
When the penalty for a policeman's mistake is to put a criminal back out on the street, then we are hurting America; we are hurting our law-abiding citizens.— Gary Bauer
When we lose faith in our officers of the law, it harms all of as. It cripples our criminal justice system. It threatens the most vulnerable parts of our community. It allows money and power to subvert justice.— Rob Thomas
We got a call from across the street that a black woman had broken into this house."— Walter Mosley
"And you were going to arrest her without even knocking on the door?"
"We had to secure her first. Um. Are you okay, ma'am?"
"Of course I am. Don't you see me?"
"Because we have her in custody. You don't have to be afraid."
"I'm not afraid of my daughter-in-law, Mrs. Theon Pinkney. She's the one who should be afraid. Four big men grabbing her and putting her in chains. What's wrong with you?"
The police stood there, slightly confused. I could see that they felt justified, even righteous, for grabbing me in Marcia's driveway. There was no question in their minds that I was a criminal and that they were on the side of the Law.
Marcia glanced at me then. We'd spent hours together but it was as if she hadn't really gotten a good look at me until seeing the tableau in her driveway.
My dad once said that in criminal law you see terrible people on their best behavior; in family law you see great people on their worst behavior.— Laura Wasser
MISDEMEANOR, n. An infraction of the law having less dignity than a felony and constituting no claim to admittance into the best criminal society.— Ambrose Bierce
God does not demand that every man attain to what is theoretically highest and best. It is better to be a good street sweeper than a bad writer, better to be a good bartender than a bad doctor, and the repentant thief who died with Jesus on Calvary was far more perfect than the holy ones who had Him nailed to the cross. And yet, abstractly speaking, what is more holy than the priesthood and less holy than the state of a criminal? The dying thief had, perhaps, disobeyed the will of God in many things: but in the most important event of his life he listened and obeyed. The Pharisees had kept the law to the letter and had spent their lives in the pursuit of a most scrupulous perfection. But they were so intent upon perfection as an abstraction that when God manifested His will and His perfection in a concrete and definite way they had no choice but to reject it.— Thomas Merton
In the criminal justice system you see the worst people on their best behavior, unlike the civil system, where the best people behave at their worst.— Edna Buchanan
In representing criminal defendants especially guilty ones it is often necessary to take the offensive against the government: to put the government on trial for its misconduct. In law, as in sports, the best defense is often a good offense. The courtroom oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is applicable only to witnesses ... because the American justice system is built on a foundation of not telling the whole entire truth.— Alan Dershowitz
