Reichberg Sentencing Quotes

As soon as men who believe they are doing God's will get hold of power, whether household or village or in Jerusalem or Rome itself, the devil enters them. It isn't long before they start drawing up lists of punishments for all kinds of innocent activities, sentencing people to be flogged or stoned in the name of God for wearing this or eating that or believing the other. And the privileged ones will build great palaces and temples to strut around in, and levy taxes on the poor to pay for their luxuries...and put them poor harmless heretics they flush out to horrible public deaths, to terrify the rest into obedience. ~ Philip Pullman

The portrait artist must acknowledge human complexity with each brushstroke. The eyes, nose and mouth that compose a sitter's face, just like the suffering and joy that compose his soul, are similar to those of ten million others yet still singular to him. This acknowledgment is where art begins. It may also be where mercy begins. If criminals drew the faces of their victims before perpetrating their crimes and judges drew the faces of the guilty before sentencing them, then there would be no faces for executioners to draw. ~ Anthony Marra

You don't hear TV cops griping because they have to enforce some Draconian law that shouldn't be on the books in the first place, or lamenting vindictive excesses in sentencing. Hollywood, supposedly a frothing cauldron of liberalism, has always been conservative on crime. ~ Tom Shales

Mandatory sentencing guidelines have become as complicated and detailed as the IRS code! ~ Harold H. Greene

I've been a lawyer in Detroit for a lot of years. I've seen the system up close and personal. I've seen the charging differences, the sentencing differences, blacks in white towns harassed and pulled over for the crime of simply being there and being black. ~ Mark M. Bello

I have been manipulated, and I have in turn manipulated others, by recording their response to suffering and misery. So there is guilt in every direction: guilt because I don't practice religion, guilt because I was able to walk away, while this man was dying of starvation or being murdered by another man with a gun. And I am tired of guilt, tired of saying to myself: I didn't kill that man on that photograph, I didn't starve that child. That's why I want to photograph landscapes and flowers. I am sentencing myself to peace. ~ Don McCullin

The massive prison-building project that began in the 1980s created the means of concentrating and managing what the capitalist system had implicitly declared to be a human surplus. In the meantime, elected officials and the dominant media justified the new draconian sentencing practices, sending more and more people to prison in the frenzied drive to build more and more prisons by arguing that this was the only way to make our communities safe from murderers, rapists, and robbers. ~ Angela Y. Davis

Some of the folks we see are in for defending themselves against their abusers, or drug charges that, because of the California state prison system, they have mandatory sentencing and life in prison for three counts of simple drug possession, or whatever. I find it not only helpful but, I think, necessary in maintaining my grounding and my perspective. Because music is such an unrealistic job to have. It's a really lucky job to have, but it's also very unrealistic. ~ Thao Nguyen

It's kind of like sentencing. A lot of people say that we have a heavy sentence for this crime and a light sentence for another crime, and what we ought to do is reduce the heavy sentence so it's more in line with the other. Wrong. In most cases we ought to increase the light sentence and make it compatible with the heavy sentence, and be serious about punishment because we are becoming too tolerant as a society, folks, especially of crime, in too many parts of the country. ~ Rush Limbaugh

achievements as sentencing a youth to have his hands cut off, his tongue torn out with pincers, and his body ~ Charles Dickens

When there's change, and people fear things, they become more dogmatic in their views. They lash out: you can see it in the media, scapegoating and penal sentencing. ~ Samantha Harvey

Earlier in [2007] the [Prime Minister's Office] had also drawn criticism for trying to muzzle the judiciary. The reproach came from Antonio Lamer, the former chief justice of the Supreme Court ... 'I must say I was taken aback,' said Lamer, who sat on the Supreme Court for twenty years. 'The prime minister is going the wrong route as regards the independence of the judiciary. He's trying to interfere with the sentencing process. ~ Lawrence Martin

I am deeply impressed with the gravity and wisdom with which most federal judges approach the responsibility of sentencing. It is a difficult, soul-searching task at best. ~ Robert Kennedy

I worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week for years. Being a comic book artist is like sentencing yourself to life imprisonment at hard labor in solitary confinement. I don't think I'd do it again. ~ Wally Wood

More recently, civil rights groups around the country have helped to launch legal attacks and vobramf campaigns against felon disenfranchisement laws and have strenuously opposed discriminatory crack sentencing laws and guidelines, as well as "zero tolerance" policies that effectively funnel youth of color from schools to jails. ~ Michelle Alexander

What do the nationalists say about killers punishing murderers and thieves sentencing looters? ~ Khalil

The father of Ruth van Cleve's child, she reports, is under the protection and care of the Norfolk County Correctional Authority, awaiting sentencing for what Ruth van Cleve describes several times as operating a pharmaceutical company without a license. ~ David Foster Wallace

The risk of racial prejudice infecting a capital sentencing proceeding is especially serious in light of the complete finality of the death sentence. ~ Byron White

Then, while the other members of my family were waiting in the living room, my mom pulled me aside at the top of the stairs.

"Before it gets too crazy, I need to tell you something," she said...

"Elizabeth, what this man has done is terrible. There aren't any words that are strong enough to describe how wicked and evil he is! He has taken nine months of your life that you will never get back again. But the best punishment you could ever give him is to be happy. To move forward with your life. To do exactly what you want. Because, yes, this will probably go to trial and some kind of sentencing will be given to him and that wicked woman. But even if that's true, you may never feel like justice has been served or that true restitution has been made.

"But you don't need to worry about that. At the end of the day, God is our ultimate judge. He will make up to you every pain and loss that you have suffered. And if it turns out that these wicked people are not punished here on Earth, it doesn't matter. His punishments are just. You don't ever have to worry. You don't ever have to even think about them again. ...

"You be happy, Elizabeth. Just be happy. If you go and feel sorry for yourself, or if you dwell on what has happened, if you hold on to your pain, that is allowing him to steal more of your life away. So don't you do that! Don't you let him! There is no way he deserves that. Not one more second of your life. You keep every second ~ Elizabeth Smart

The Supreme Court has now closed the courthouse doors to claims of racial bias at every stage of the criminal justice process, from stops and searches to plea bargaining and sentencing. The system of mass incarceration is now, for all practical purposes, thoroughly immunized from claims of racial bias. ~ Michelle Alexander

Between 1990 and 2005, a new prison opened in the United States every ten days. Prison growth and the resulting "prison-industrial complex" - the business interests that capitalize on prison construction - made imprisonment so profitable that millions of dollars were spent lobbying state legislators to keep expanding the use of incarceration to respond to just about any problem. Incarceration became the answer to everything - health care problems like drug addiction, poverty that had led someone to write a bad check, child behavioral disorders, managing the mentally disabled poor, even immigration issues generated responses from legislators that involved sending people to prison. Never before had so much lobbying money been spent to expand America's prison population, block sentencing reforms, create new crime categories, and sustain the fear and anger that fuel mass incarceration than during the last twenty-five years in the United States. ~ Bryan Stevenson

This is unjust. The questionnaire includes circumstances of a criminal's birth and upbringing, including his or her family, neighborhood, and friends. These details should not be relevant to a criminal case or to the sentencing. Indeed, if a prosecutor attempted to tar a defendant by mentioning his brother's criminal record or the high crime rate in his neighborhood, a decent defense attorney would roar, "Objection, Your Honor!" And a serious judge would sustain it. This is the basis of our legal system. We are judged by what we do, not by who we are. And although we don't know the exact weights that are attached to these parts of the test, any weight above zero is unreasonable. ~ Cathy O'Neil

American prisons have become warehouses for the mentally ill. Mass incarceration has been largely ruled by misguided drug policy and excessive sentencing, but the internment of hundreds of thousands of poor and mentally ill people has been a driving force in achieving our record levels of imprisonment. ~ Bryan Stevenson

So just take a look at the different prosecution rates and sentencing rules for ghetto drugs like crack and suburban drugs like cocaine, or for drunk drivers and drug users, or just between blacks and whites in general―the statistics are clear: this is a war on the poor and minorities. Or ask yourself a simple question: how come marijuana is illegal but tobacco legal? It can't be because of the health impact, because that's exactly the other way around―there has never been a fatality from marijuana use among million reported users in the United States, whereas tobacco kills hundreds of thousands of people every year. My strong suspicion, though I don't know how to prove it, is that the reason is that marijuana's a weed, you can grow it in your backyard, so there's nobody who would make any money off it if it were legal. Tobacco requires extensive capital inputs and technology, and it can be monopolized, so there are people who can make a ton of money off it. I don't really see any other difference between the two of them, frankly―except that tobacco's far more lethal and far more addictive. ~ Noam Chomsky

Discrimination and multiple deprivations of human rights are also frequently part of the problem, sentencing entire populations to poverty ... It is surely a matter of outrage that over half a million women die annually from complications related to pregnancy and childbirth. This is nearly half the annual global death toll, and arguably, a direct reflection of the disempowerment of women in social, economic and political life. ~ Navi Pillay

it was clear that true freedom meant not just the ability to vote or choose one's own political representatives, but the ability to build one's own schools, to have accessible health care and jobs, to have clean air and water and energy in the control of the communities that utilize them. Of course, true freedom and independence also includes a free and fair judicial system, with responsible and accountable policing, fair legal process, and reasoned judgment and sentencing. ~ Oscar Lopez Rivera

Anyone who thinks it's smart to cut immigration is sentencing Australia to poverty. ~ Malcolm Turnbull

Mandatory minimum sentencing has disproportionately affected blacks, Hispanics and others who often don't have the financial means to fight back. ~ Rand Paul

A major challenge of this movement is to do the work that will create more humane, habitable environments for people in prison without bolstering the permanence of the prison system. How, then, do we accomplish this balancing act of passionately attending to the needs of prisoners- calling for less violent conditions, an end to state sexual assault, improved physical and mental health care, greater access to drug programs, better educational work opportunities, unionization of prison labor, more connections with families and communities, shorter or alternative sentencing- and at the same time call for alternatives to sentencing altogether, no more prison construction, and abolitionist strategies that question the place of prison in our future? ~ Angela Y. Davis

Reading blogs would be like sentencing yourself to stand in a virtual online corner, trapped by some crashing bore who only wanted to talk about trains, or his poetry, or something. ~ Cecilia Peartree

The thing that happens is that politicians run on tough-on-crime rhetoric. You appeal to the public and say, 'Let's put more money into taller fences, tougher laws, tougher sentencing, handcuffs,' and where does that money come from? Well, immediately, it comes out of all the money needed for corrections. ~ Eugene Jarecki

Yet in 1995, a few brave souls challenged the implementation of Georgia's "two strikes and you're out" sentencing scheme, which imposes life imprisonment for a second drug offense. Georgia's district attorneys, who have unbridled discretion to decide whether to seek this harsh penalty, had invoked it against only 1 percent of white defendants facing a second drug conviction but against 16 percent of black defendants. The result was that 98.4 percent of those serving life sentences under the provision were black. ~ Michelle Alexander

All faults or defects, from the slightest misconduct to the most flagitious crime, Pantocyclus attributed to some deviation from perfect Regularity in the bodily figure, caused perhaps (if not congenital) by some collision in a crowd; by neglect to take exercise, or by taking too much of it; or even by a sudden change of temperature, resulting in a shrinkage or expansion in some too susceptible part of the frame. Therefore, concluded that illustrious Philosopher, neither good conduct nor bad conduct is a fit subject, in any sober estimation, for either praise or blame. For why should you praise, for example, the integrity of a Square who faithfully defends the interests of his client, when you ought in reality rather to admire the exact precision of his right angles? Or again, why blame a lying, thievish Isosceles when you ought rather to deplore the incurable inequality of his sides?

Theoretically, this doctrine is unquestionable; but it has practical drawbacks. In dealing with an Isosceles, if a rascal pleads that he cannot help stealing because of his unevenness, you reply that for that very reason, because he cannot help being a nuisance to his neighbours, you, the Magistrate, cannot help sentencing him to be consumed - and there's an end of the matter. But in little domestic difficulties, where the penalty of consumption, or death, is out of the question, this theory of Configuration sometimes comes in awkwardly; and I must confess that occasionally when one o ~ Edwin A. Abbott