Extenuating Circumstances Quotes

They committed murder, it is true; but their situation may have rendered it inevitable.

With regard to what is done in drunkenness, this state, voluntarily contracted, does not hinder the imputation of a bad action.

Life is an unending stream of extenuating circumstances.

As individuals are best off believing they control their behaviour, the judiciary is best off imputing that control - barring powerful extenuating factors such as mental illness.

Nine times out of 10, extenuating circumstances aside, I believe that people are where they are by some kind of choice on their part. You need to acknowledge that, 'Hey, I'm here because I steered my horse in this direction.'

The plea of necessity, that eternal argument of all conspirators.

Finally, with regard to actions manifestly bad or criminal, to which a person is forced through fear of some great evil, and especially death; we must lay down as a general rule, that the unhappy circumstances, under which a person labors, may indeed diminish the crime of a man unequal to this trial, who commits a bad action in spite of himself, and against his own inward conviction, yet the action remains intrinsically vicious, and worthy of censure; wherefore it may be, and actually is imputed, unless the exception of necessity can be alleged in the person's favor.

For the modern criminal it is a great good fortune to be able to count somewhere among his ancestry or other relations a criminal, a lunatic, or just a mere drunkard, for in a court of law that will win him a lighter penalty or, not seldom, an acquittal. Things have come to such a pass that there is hardly a criminal case nowadays where that sort of defense is not put forward.