July-August 2018

A roundup of notable quotables

“My jobs have required me to study cops for 37 years. I’ve worked with them. I’ve played ball with them. I’ve drunk beer with them. I’ve laughed with them, I’ve cried with them, I’ve celebrated with them, and I’ve suffered with them, but I have never for a single moment understood them. I cannot imagine what kind of person does all the things they do for a society of strangers, three million of us in this county who they will never meet, but for whom they are always committed. Always there. Always ready.”

—Honorable William W. Bedsworth, an associate justice on the Fourth District Court of Appeals, in a speech at the grand opening of Golden West College’s Criminal Justice Training Center (CJTC) in Huntington Beach, California, in April. http://behindthebadgeoc.com/cities//appellate-justice-makes-case-for-how-tough-it-is-for-police-officers

“Dogs are man’s best friend and, as the defendant is about to learn, we are drug dealers’ worst enemy.”

—New York U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue, in an Associated Press article about a veterinarian, Andres Lopez Elorza, who pled not guilty in a federal court in Brooklyn to drug trafficking charges. It is alleged that Elorza stitched packets of liquid heroin into the bodies of puppies, which were then sent on commercial flights to New York City, where the drugs were cut out of them.

https://www.mrt.com/news/crime/article/US-Vet-implanted-heroin-in-puppies-for-Colombia-12878068.php

“‘In every good marriage, it helps to be a little deaf.’ I have followed that advice assiduously, and not only at home through 56 years of marital partnership. I have employed it as well in every workplace, including the Supreme Court. When a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best to tune it out. Reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.”

—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, relaying advice she received from her mother-in-law on her wedding day, in an op-ed piece she wrote for The New York Times in 2016. The same quote appears in a new documentary on her life, called <RBG,> which hit theaters in early May.

https://groknation.com/culture/rbg-badass-ruth-bader-ginsburg/

“Something was telling me to go back to this area.”

—Cpt. Darryl Wormuth of the Prince George County (Maryland) Police Department, after he’d answered a call about a man lying face-down in the grass near an apartment complex. Cpt. Wormuth went with medics to drop the man at a hospital and finished his shift three hours later—but he felt a tug to return to the apartment complex. There, in a remote corner of the parking lot, he found an SUV, engine running, with a toddler strapped in a car seat by herself, and it was a hot day—she was the daughter of the man Wormuth had taken to the hospital, and she’d been left alone in the hot car for hours. The officer was able to rouse her, though, and she was fine after having some water and chicken nuggets. Whew!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/please-god-let-this-child-be-alive-officer-discovers-child-alone-in-car-on-hot-day/2018/05/03/76420ddc-4e52-11e8-84a0-458a1aa9ac0a_story.html

“Traditionally when there are handwritten letters in my in-box, people in my position don’t really like those. But I could tell from the shape of it, it must have been nice.”

—Ellis County & District Attorney Patrick Wilson, of a thank-you note he received from a crime victim. In 2005, Wilson tried a defendant for sexually assaulting a 9-year-old girl (the man was convicted), and just this past May, that little girl—all grown up, graduating from high school, and planning to go into social work—wrote him a letter to thank him for helping her.

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/Graduation-Announcement-Brings-District-Attorney-to-Tears-481882651.html

“When your client wants
To insist he’s not guilty
You have to let him”

—Twitter user @SupremeHaiku (Supreme Court Haiku) on May’s decision in McCoy v. Louisiana