Criminal Law Quotes

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

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

“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

“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

“Well, did he do it?"

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.”
― Michael Connelly, The Lincoln Lawyer

“In the criminal law [...] imprisonment should be resorted to only after the most anxious consideration.”
― Pius Langa

“A vast amount of psychiatric effort has been, and continues to be, devoted to legal and quasi-legal activities. In my opinion, the only certain result has been the aggrandizement of psychiatry. The value to the legal profession and to society as a whole of psychiatric help in administering the criminal law, is, to say the least, uncertain. Perhaps society has been injured, rather than helped, by the furor psychodiagnosticus and psychotherapeuticus in criminology which it invited, fostered, and tolerated.”
― Thomas Stephen Szasz, Law, Liberty and Psychiatry

“Exclusion [of evidence] exacts a heavy toll on both the judicial system and society at large. It almost always requires courts to ignore reliable, trustworthy evidence bearing on guilt or innocence. And its bottom-line effect, in many cases, is to suppress the truth and set the criminal loose in the community without punishment. [internal citations omitted]”
― Samuel Alito, Davis v. United States, Decision and Opinions

“Law must never be taken as gospel – today's law may become tomorrow's crime, today's crime may become tomorrow's law.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mücadele Muhabbet: Gospel of An Unarmed Soldier

“Der Lebensschutz des potentiellen Opfers soll mehr wiegen als die Menschenwürde des potenziellen Täters.”
― Heribert Prantl, Der Terrorist als Gesetzgeber. Wie man mit Angst Politik macht

“Das Feindstrafrecht betrachtet sein Subjekt als Sphinx: halb Mensch, halb Tier.”
― Heribert Prantl, Der Terrorist als Gesetzgeber. Wie man mit Angst Politik macht

“Death Penalty' in rarest of rare cases, should adorn criminal justice system in India,which would operate as a detterent mechanism. Abrogation of capital punishment and it's obliteration from the law, would be a great folly. In the human rights perspective, concretising the human rights of the criminal(perpetrator of a particular offense attracting Capital punishment ) by negating Human Rights of the victim is again a murder of justice.”
― Henrietta Newton Martin

“Far too often, to be charged with a crime is to become something less than human.”
― Jerome F. Buting, Illusion of Justice: Inside Making a Murderer and America's Broken System

“The permanent antidote to crime is education alone.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“It is the duty of every citizen /resident of any country , nationals as well as expatriates to know the basics of the governing laws of the country one resides.

Ignorance of the law or unawareness cannot be pleaded to escape liability.”
― Henrietta Newton Martin

“The present issue is one of comparative simplicity. That is, the facts of the case are intelligible to the least-instructed layman, and the only persons utterly at sea are those connected with the law. But FACTUM CLARUM, JUS NEBULOSUM, or, ;the clearer the facts, the more dubious the law.' What the appellant did in fact is simple and manifest, but what offence, if any, he has committed in law is a question of the gravest difficulty.
"Is It a Free Country”
― A.P. Herbert, Uncommon Law: Being 66 Misleading Cases Revised and Collected in One Volume

“It may be said at once that it any case no blame whatever attaches to the persons responsible for the framing of these charges, who are placed in a most difficult position by the appellant's unfortunate act. It is a principle of the English law that a person who appears in a police court has done something undesirable, and citizens who take it upon themselves to do unusual actions which attract the attention of the police should be careful to bring these actions into one of the recognized categories of crimes and offenses, for it is intolerable that the police should be put to the pains of inventing reasons for finding them undesirable.
" Is It a Free Country?”
― A.P. Herbert, Uncommon Law: Being 66 Misleading Cases Revised and Collected in One Volume

“criminal defense attorney san diego dui specialists Call 24/7 to discuss your best defense strategy
(619) 330-5815”
― Dui Specialists

“Antidote to Crime (The Sonnet)

The way to a crime-free world is simple,
But it lies outside of all the legal 'n partisan muck.
Take away the guns from the kids on the street,
Put books in their hands and food in their stomach.
By the time they grow up into young adults,
The prehistoric warmongers will be in death bed.
The children whose childhood you restored,
Will all be ready to hold the reins of world stage.
Law, policy 'n all that stuff surely have their place,
But not as the antidote to crime, chaos 'n descension.
The permanent antidote to crime is education alone,
Law ‘n policy are just to ensure its true democratization.
More than trying a crime, focus on treating environment.
Feed the hungry ‘n establish education, free from any debt.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“So long as the precise letters of the law are more important than justice, there'll only be the illusion of order, but no justice.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans

“In our system of criminal law, the state, not the victim, is actually considered the injured party, and it is the state, not the victim, that has the exclusive right to take action against a criminal offender.”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice

“The way to a crime-free world is simple, but it lies outside of all the legal 'n partisan muck. Take away the guns from the kids on the street, put books in their hands and food in their stomach.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Honor He Wrote: 100 Sonnets For Humans Not Vegetables

“Law is there to enforce punishment, that's why it's called law enforcement. Civilians are meant to stand dutybound for order, that's why it's called civic duty, my friend.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans

“Law is like a band-aid. Band-aids don't heal the wound, they only prevent further infection while your natural immune system does the healing. Likewise, law doesn't cure crime, it only keeps crime in check, while individual accountability treats the inhumanity that causes crime. And at some point the band-aid must come off, because, just like a body covered in band-aid is the sign of a sick person, a society covered in law is the sign of a sick species.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Himalayan Sonneteer: 100 Sonnets of Unsubmission