Stacey F. Beckerman Quotes

A judge who cannot punish, associates himself in the end with the criminal.

Even the vilest criminal remains a human being possessed of common human dignity.

Criminals are punished, that others may be deterred.

The government may set decoys to entrap criminals. But it may nor provoke or create a crime, and then punish the criminal, its creature.

Law enforcement does not ask an advantage in its struggle with the lawless. It asks only that the scales of justice be balanced. The cause of justice is not served when hardened criminals are allowed to go free through legal technicalities.

The Criminal Code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity that without an easy access to exceptions it in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear it a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.

Let me remember, when I find myself inclined to pity a criminal, that there is likewise a pity due to the country.

The fact is that our administration of the criminal law has as nearly reached perfection in guarding the innocent (and guilty) from conviction as is possible for any human institution; but in securing the safety and order of the community by the conviction of the guilty it is woefully inadequate.

America today is becoming a Prosecutocracy. Prosecutors have the power when over 97 percent of the convictions are without trial.

In Scotland over many years we have cultivated through our justice system what I hope can be described as a 'culture of compassion.' On the other hand, there still exists in many parts of the U.S., if not nationally, an attitude towards the concept of justice which can only be described as a 'culture of vengeance.'

We make no apology for people who should be in prison being in prison.

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.

One of the tests of the civilization of people is the treatment of its criminals.

If you treat defendants by the same rules of courtesy as everyone else – give them fundamental due process, treat them with dignity, you'll get it back.

The real answer to the problem of crime committed by persons on bail, and indeed the solution to the general problem of crime, lies not in preventive detention of individuals presumed innocent, but in the speedy trial of the accused and the swift and sure punishment of the guilty.

In the criminal justice community, as a judge, being tough is not enough. You have to be fair.

The rights of the lowliest criminal are not his alone. They belong to us all.

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.

Due process does not require that every conceivable step be taken, at whatever cost, to eliminate the possibility of convicting an innocent person. To conclude otherwise would all but paralyze our system for enforcement of the criminal law.

To declare that in the administration of criminal law the end justifies the means -- to declare that the Government may commit crimes in order to secure conviction of a private criminal -- would bring terrible retribution.

Every first year law student learns that sentencing has four goals: retribution, incapicitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation.

Humanity and good policy conspire to dictate, that the benign prerogative of pardoning should be as little as possible fettered or embarrassed. The criminal code of every country partakes so much of necessary severity, that without an easy access to exceptions in favor of unfortunate guilt, justice would wear a countenance too sanguinary and cruel.

No one would normally accuse me of being soft on crime.

The abhorrence of society to the use of involuntary confessions does not turn alone on their inherent untrustworthiness. It also turns on the deep-rooted feeling that the police must obey the law while enforcing the law; that, in the end, life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.

Of course, as a German, I wouldn't like to tell the American people how to handle their criminal justice.