Crimes Quotes
The increase compared to the rest of the world really occurred in the 1980s when The War on Drugs began jailing drug users and dealers and that accounts for the major difference. The 3000 different federal crimes, if an accurate number, is all the more remarkable because in America, the major part of law enforcement is handled by the state and local governments.
Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon-Condé, the Duke of Enghien, was falsely accused of plotting against the French government. He was arrested and hung, to the dismay of Napoleon's court. The famous and feared Fouché was heard to say contemptuously: The quotation may first have been uttered at the May 21 execution by Boulay de la Meurthe.
This is a proverb reflecting a major difference between Arab traditions of justice and that of most Western societies where guilt is not to be vested upon family and friends of a person who commits a crime. While Western jurisprudence recognizes harboring a fugitive as a crime, it is always considered a less heinous crime than the original murderer, robber or whatever. However, in the Bedouin tradition the befriender of the criminal is guilty of the same crime and deserves the same punishment as the criminal. Ironically, Arabs are not the only people with this notion. Sephardic Jews (whose roots and origins are from Spain and the Middle East and who spent many generations in Arab dominated and controlled lands tended to use a different standard from the traditional European Jews with regard to retaliation for acts of terrorism and often used the principle illustrated by this proverb to justify bulldozing the homes of terrorists even after they were dead and attacking associates of leaders of terrorist organizations.
Generally we make laws to try and stop bad actions. Without the bad actions, there would generally be no laws.
This proverb only makes sense in the light of understanding the Arab concept of revenge—“blood.” In a rural desert environment where little can be expected of government, the Arabs have developed a law enforcement and peace keeping mechanism which while primitive from modern standards, nevertheless worked to some degree. It is that revenge—“blood” is a moral necessity and obligation of all people, and revenge is not limited by time or to the individuals involved in the first incidence. The immediate family are the first to exact revenge, but the extended family follows and often the entire clan. Sometimes revenge is tribal or even national. Anyone who fails to revenge a member in his group is not only a disgrace, but is a clear and present danger to the group because then they can be attacked with impunity. So revenge is a strong obligation of the group members and blood must be paid with blood no matter how many generations it may take. The only thing that keeps me and my family safe, is the surety what whosoever kills one of us will themselves be killed or if they die a natural death we will take revenge on one of the evildoers relatives. Crime must never pay! Needless to say, this often produces cycles of violence that might never end but for the principle of this proverb—that the obligation of revenge is heavier upon the relatives of the first victim than upon this who are seeking revenge for previous acts of vengeance.
Jury nullification is when the jury believes that the defendant has committed the crime alleged, but acquits anyway because it believes the law is wrong or the defendant acted properly or justly. Most trial judges detest the concept and often tell the jury that they may not engage in the practice. However, there is a long American tradition of jury nullification dating back to colonial America. This quotation shows one of the negative aspects of nullification. See {640833}.
At that time in American History, the George W. Bush Justice Department had a small team of lawyers who wrote a legal brief that defined torture in such a way that many of the most common forms of torture were no longer legal torture, even though they had been torture in American law and were again torture after this embarrassing episode of American history. The renamed techniques were called “enhanced interrogation” and a few terrorist suspects were subjected to it before the rules and laws were changed and the “legal opinions” nullified. The FBI and military intelligence did not use the so called enhanced interrogation techniques as they felt that torture produced unreliable intelligence as the victim will say anything the questioner wants to hear to end the torture. They also thought the Justice department memo was sloppy and defective legal work. Senator McCain was a particular expert on torture in that he had, during the Vietnam War, been captured and imprisoned for 7 years during which he had been tortured on several occasions.
Many cultures and nations, even after a century will not admit to the human rights violations that previous governments might have committed. Most dramatic is the Turkish government's not even allowing studies or discussions about the organized government mass murders of citizens of Armenian extraction—–the so called "Armenian Genocide ", but even in his native Poland there was and has been little admission of those Poles who collaborated with Hitler and the Nazis in the murder of millions of polish citizens and stole the residences, farms and other properties of Jews and other Poles who the Germans sent to concentration camps and even for the few who survived threatened them with death when they returned to reclaim their own property. Most modern societies have great difficulty coming to grips with police brutality and often denying that it is an endemic problem as opposed to one or two "bad apples".
A. B. Magil. Poem written upon the suicide of the Russian Poet, Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky, 1893-1930. The fact that a Marxist Russian Poet would commit suicide was not seen as the result of a mental problem like depression, but as a political act and a statement of dissatisfaction with 1930 Russia.
1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon. He was advocating British entry into WWI in defense of the Neutrality of Belgium as was their treaty obligation.
This article of impeachment is quoted often because it shows that criminal activity or violation of a law was not required for impeachment. The time was close to the adoption of the Constitution and presumably reflected sentiment of the founders. Chase however was acquitted as the Senate did not agree that the charges had been proven.
