Patrick Fitzgerald Quotes

I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law.

Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.

We're becoming drug courts.

Whate'er is best administered is best," may truly be said of a juridical system, and the due distribution of justice depends more upon the rules by which suits are to be conducted, than on the perfection of the code by which rights are defined.

Law is the prophecy of what a court will do.

The compulsions of the law seem to have been provided for those only who require compulsions

No nation can answer for perfect exactitude of proceedings in all their inferior courts. It suffices to provide a supreme judicature where all error and partiality will be ultimately corrected

That the president of the United States may be subpoenaed, and examined as a witness, and required to produce any paper in his possession, is not controverted.

there shall be in every court, three justices or commissioners, who shall sit with the twelve men of the neighborhood, with them to hear all causes, and to assist the said twelve men of the neighborhood in case of law; and that they the said justices shall pronounce such judgment as they shall receive from, and be directed by the said twelve men in whom only the judgment resides, and not otherwise.

The experience of being a prosecutor gives us a sort of proctologists view of our society.

I don’t like the death penalty but it was the law in Ohio. Therefore as a prosecutor I sought the death penalty and as a judge I imposed the death penalty. It was the law and you have to obey the law.

All judges had rather that ten innocent should suffer than that one guilty should escape

Most victims of rendition were arrested and detained illegally in the first place: some were abducted; others were denied access to any legal process, including the ability to challenge the decision to transfer them because of the risk of torture. There is also a close link between renditions and enforced disappearances. Many of those who have been illegally detained in one country and illegally transported to another have subsequently “disappeared”, including dozens who have “disappeared” in US custody. Every one of the victims of rendition interviewed by Amnesty International has described incidents of torture and other ill-treatment

When the Supreme Court renders an important decision, the reasons it gives are often more important than the choice it has made.

Without efforts to modernize legal institutions, new international agreements will remain unrealized and our democracies will continue to be threatened by our inability to track corruption and other criminal activities.

And let the sheriffs who have arrested them bring them before the justice without any other summons.

Where matters of dispute are made the subject of arbitration under the forms of law. Human judgment is never unerring, and is rarely regarded as otherwise than wrong by the unsuccessful party in the contest.

When citizens testify before grand juries they are required to tell the truth. Without the truth, our criminal justice system cannot serve our nation or its citizens.

While the ramifications of such a law and the results of the Court's decision here may be personally troubling to me as parent, it is my obligation as a judge to impartially apply the laws of this state without imposing my moral view on the decisions of the Legislature.

At some point the law must prevail and the lawyers must go home.

Laws are there for a reason, and we have an obligation to follow them.

Out here, due process is a bullet.

Laws exist in every state that make animal cruelty a crime. Horse slaughter is simply another form of animal abuse.

The more prohibitions there are, the poorer the people will be. The more laws are promulgated, the more thieves and bandits there will be.

Nearly every lawsuit is an insult to the intelligence of both plaintiff and defendant.