If it's near dinner-time, the foreman takes out his watch when the jury has retired, and says: "Dear me, gentlemen, ten minutes to five, I declare! I dine at five, gentlemen." "So do I," says everybody else, except two men who ought to have dined at three and seem more than half disposed to stand out in consequence. The foreman smiles, and puts up his watch:--"Well, gentlemen, what do we say, plaintiff or defendant, gentlemen?
Crime is a logical extension of the sort of behavior that often [is] considered perfectly respectable in legitimate business.
He who opens a school door, closes a prison.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.
Nelson Mandela and Malcolm X came out of prison stronger.
Justice is that virtue of the soul which is distributive according to desert.
Corporal punishment falls far more heavily than most weighty pecuniary penalty.
In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls.
The guilt of enforced crimes lies on those who impose them.
One man meets an infamous punishment for that crime which confers a diadem upon another.
No crime has been without a precedent.
Let us remember that justice must be observed even to the lowest.
Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row.
We are prisoners of ideas.
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.
On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.
I just remember that disturbing feeling of walking into that prison, the complete loss of privacy, the complete loss of stimulation, dignity.
The penalty for laughing in a courtroom is six months in jail; if it were not for this penalty, the jury would never hear the evidence.
The object of punishment is prevention from evil; it never can be made impulsive to good.
Mere factual innocence is no reason not to carry out a death sentence properly reached.
No obligation to justice does force a man to be cruel, or to use the sharpest sentence.
The refined punishments of the spiritual mode are usually much more indecent and dangerous than a good smack.
Fear can be like a prison. It is, however, a self made prison. Many are imprisoned by fear. No one else can liberate them from this prison. Others may inspire them but they must liberate themselves.
There are few better measures of the concern a society has for its individual members and its own well being than the way it handles criminals.
The world itself is but a large prison, out of which some are daily led to execution.
