Eric Holder Quotes

This interesting historical quotation illustrates the fact that in almost every American generation there are those who believe that society has gone too far in protecting the rights of criminal suspects at the expense of law and order in the general society. This is nothing new. This is a classic argument given by those who would deny a defendant the Constitutional protection against self-incrimination. The belief that an innocent man has nothing to fear from the police is refuted by the many cases of innocent men being convicted by evidence they have given in the belief that they were innocent, and served long jail sentences only to later be proved by DNA evidence that they could not possibly have been guilty. Since Nott’s day, society has not only found many cases where honest error was made by the police or prosecutors, but many where there was venal prosecutorial misconduct and defendants were jailed even though the authorities were aware of evidence of innocence and kept it secret. There have been a number of these cases where a defendant was on death row and about to be executed when it was found he was innocent. Probably there have been men wrongly executed. See {629444} for a probable example.

The sheriff not only operated chain gangs in the 1990's but also had female prisoners chained together doing road work.

This law had an interesting unanticipated effect. Since most prisoners were assigned work outside the jail in different locations, there were not enough guards to watch them all so most reported to their work assignments as if they were going to a job and returned to the jail after work. The prisoners were paid wages by private employers and the first dollar a day they earned went to the State for their expenses. However, the prisoners got to keep the rest. The system seemed to work very well, however the crimes were relatively minor ones. In modern times, as a practical matter, almost no one gets jailed for these offenses any more.

This quotation is a great example of the difficulty of deciding some of the major Constitutional issues. Most reasonable people believe that Rehnquist certainly has a point. On the other hand, critics observe that this quotation essentially says that it is OK to convict an innocent person if it cost too much or be too much trouble to do so. Reasonable people would also agree that this objection has much merit also. So the judicial system is stuck with deciding when the cost or trouble is too much. There will never, can never, be a clear cut answer.

“Patriot” meant someone who was a supporter of anti-monarchy dissidents and rebels. It was more than a good citizen. The prisoners were incarcerated because they had been accused of supporting the monarchy early in or after the French Revolution.