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?
If you strike at, imprison, or kill us, out of our prisons or graves we will still evoke a spirit that will thwart you, and perhaps, raise a force that will destroy you! We defy you! Do your worst!
Here the great art lies, to discern in what the law is to be to restraint and punishment, and in what things persuasion only is to work.
The worst prison is not of stone. It is of a throbbing heart, outraged by an infamous life.
Well does Heaven have care that no man secures happiness by crime.
No crime has been without a precedent.
I have been studying how I may compare This prison where I live unto the world; And, for because the world is populous, And here is not a creature but myself, I cannot do it. Yet I'll hammer it out.
In prison, you get the chance to see who really loves you.
He was a first-time nonviolent possible offender, ... And under the mandatory minimums, he was put in prison for 15 years. Not only does the punishment not fit the crime, but the mandatory minimums don't give judges any discretion to look at the background of the case, to read into the specifics of the case. I don't know a judge who really is in favor of the mandatory minimums.
A country is in a bad state, which is governed only by laws; because a thousand things occur for which laws cannot provide, and where authority ought to interpose.
To seek the redress of grievances by going to law, is like sheep running for shelter to a bramble bush.
It was only when I lay there on the rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not between states nor between social classes nor between political parties, but right through every human heart, through all human hearts. And that is why I turn back to the years of my imprisonment and say, sometimes to the astonishment of those about me, bless you, prison, for having been a part of my life.
Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.
America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.
Prosecution I have managed to avoid; but I have been arrested, charged in a police court, have refused to be bound over, and thereupon have been unconditionally released - to my great regret; for I have always wanted to know what going to prison was like.
To trial bring her stolen charms, and let her prison be my arms.
I am certain that nothing has done so much to destroy the juridical safeguards of individual freedom as the striving after this mirage of social justice.
It is not at the table, but in prison, that you learn who your true friends are.
A man who has no excuse for a crime, is indeed defenseless!
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.
He who profits by a crime commits it.
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts.
I know not whether laws be right, or whether laws be wrong; All that we know who lie in gaol is that the wall is strong; And that each day is like a year, a year whose days are long.
You utter a vow, or forge a signature, and you may find yourself bound for life to a monastery, a woman, or prison.
We're in a war. People who blast some pot on a casual basis are guilty of treason.
