Quotes

How dreadful it is when the right judge judges wrong.

The idea that the sole aim of punishment is to prevent crime is obviously grounded upon the theory that crime can be prevented, which is almost as dubious as the notion that poverty can be prevented.

Kill a man, and you are an assassin. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you are a God.

It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but similars that breed their own kind.

Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.

Trial by jury itself, instead of being a security to persons who are accused, shall be a delusion, a mockery, and a snare.

Crimes lead one into another; they who are capable of being forgers are capable of being incendiaries.

Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them.

Self is the only prison that can bind the soul.

Fast closed with double grills
And triple gates – the cell
To wicked souls is hell;
But to a mind that's innocent
'Tis only iron, wood and stone.

Liberty is rendered even more precious by the recollection of servitude.

To make punishments efficacious, two things are necessary. They must never be disproportioned to the offence, and they must be certain.

On average, drug prisoners spend more time in federal prison than rapists, who often get out on early release because of the overcrowding in prison caused by the Drug War.

Forgiveness, that noblest of all self-denial, is a virtue which he alone who can practise in himself can willingly believe in another.

Organized crime in America takes in over forty billion dollars a year. This is quite a profitable sum, especially when one considers that the Mafia spends very little for office supplies.

The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.

Federal prison, if you get any of it, you're going to have to do 85% of it. And the reason why I called it that is because I had a friend who got sent to the federal joint and his whole... it wasn't about him being in jail. He cried about the 85%.

I don't like being famous - it is like a prison. And driving for Ferrari would make it far worse.

Nor cell, nor chain, nor dungeon speaks to the murderer like the voice of solitude.

Prisons don't rehabilitate, they don't punish, they don't protect, so what the hell do they do?

Crime succeeds by sudden despatch; honest counsels gain vigor by delay.

Concepts of justice must have hands and feet to carry out justice in every case in the shortest possible time and the lowest possible cost. That is the challenge to every lawyer and judge in America.

One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.

Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.