"Your Honor, this is nothing more than Mr. Peck's conceit that he can pull a rabbit out of a hat and his never-ending love for opportunities to hear himself talk!"
"In other words, you're not a psychologist but you play one on the radio."
Peck: "Objection! Counsel is mocking the witness."
Jack: (pauses) "Yes, I am."
Jack: "[Is the defense] Recognized by the American Psychiatric Association?"
"Shrink": "Not yet."
Jack: "Recognized by any other organizations?"
"Shrink": "It will be!"
Jack: "I'm glad we're on the cutting edge."
Abbie: "It's also possible her lawyer isn't the idiot we take him for. He held onto this until he thought it would do the most good."
Jack: "No, he's an idiot."
'Leon Gregg, 34. He was awaiting trial for robbery and his weight dropped 30 pounds in less than two months. Your medical treatment consisted of giving him an aspirin."
"He took an oath--and it wasn't to an HMO."
�If that psychiatrist hadn't found him competent, I would have found another one who did."
"No one should be heard to say that providing medical care at Rikers Island is easy. Nor is it the position of this District Attorney's office that there aren't legitimate financial constraints on the provider. We've heard that the defendant operating under those constraints is just a simple man doing the best he could. Let's look at that a little bit: Brian Gallant was at Rikers for a year; he was medicated on a daily basis by the defendant's company, with the defendant's knowledge. On the day he was released, he was hallucinating and disoriented. Nonetheless, he was handed over to the Department of Corrections, who dropped him off at a subway station in the middle of the night. He was given no medication, no referral for ongoing care. Not an address to go to; not a phone number to call. This was not done by accident or oversight. This was the express instruction of the defendant. Was not the violent behavior of Brian Gallant a foreseeable event? Was not the defendant well aware, not only of Mr. Gallant's propensities, but of the risk he constituted for every person he came in contact with? The answer is: Of course, he was aware of it; of course, he chose to ignore it; of course, it was his recklessness that brought about this woman's death. Find him guilty, Ladies and Gentlemen. He deserves it."
Abbie: "He's completely contaminating the jury pool."
Jack: "An annoying byproduct of the First Amendment."
"We know you're covering for him. Over a speeding ticket, that's understandable. On the stand at a murder trial, that's called perjury."
"We were conned!"
"If you allow the rule of law to stop at the wall of a prison, the streets of New York will be no better off than the cellblocks at Rikers."
Abbie: "They tried the victim."
Jack: "And made a badge a license to kill."
Abbie: "His birth mother was a woman by the name of Mary Elizabeth Kelly."
Jack: "She's as Jewish as I am."
Nora: "You're missing the Lateef Miller show."
Jack: "What channel?"
Nora: "Two, four, five, seven, nine."
Jack: "Glad I have cable."
"Used to be a fear of cops didn't justify shooting them."
"You ain't see nothin', yet!"
"I'll dazzle 'em in the courtroom as long as I can, see what you can dig up."
"Well, what if the defendant was just plain mad as hell? Would he be responsible for his actions then, doctor?"
Doctor: "I base my opinions on what the defendant told me."
Jack: "What he told you? What if he lied?"
Nora: "I see we have more than one ego in that courtroom with a penchant for winning."
Jack: "Guilty as charged."
"Road rage, airport rage, sports rage. Add to that parent rage, office rage, employee rage. It might be nice to think of all this as the result of some new mental illness. But the truth is, this type of behavior has become ordinary and to ask you to excuse it through the fiction of a new mental illness is just that--a fiction--because it certainly is not the law. The law says your right to rage stops at the other guy's nose. The defendant's right to be angry stopped the moment he raised his fists. It stopped the moment he struck Mr. Crider, beat him, and left him for dead. You've just seen a video of the defendant at one of his son's hockey games, heard testimony of incidents in which the defendant allowed his anger to explode into violence. Are we to hold him responsible for none of this? Are we really prepared to create a society in which no one is responsible for controlling their anger? And teach these lessons to our children? The victim in this case worked with kids--devoted himself in his spare time to bettering their lives, while the defendant lived his, vicariously, through his son, and in his anger, forgot a basic reality, the same reality his lawyer hopes you'll forget--that he is an adult. And we hold adults responsible for what they do, no matter how angry they get. Don't let Mr. Taylor off the hook. Don't create an excuse where there is none."
"Nothing like winning."
"I noticed Mr. Lyman didn't ask you about the report from Intelli-Mate that was found in your office. Is that because you're having trouble coming up with a lie that covers that circumstance?"
Nora: "Leslie Stanton--the man's a legend in a lot of people's minds."
Jack: "Especially his own."
Abbie: "Life without parole."
Jack: "He won't be able to play his way out of that."
Behrens: "You can't be serious about charging a network vice president."
Jack: "Do we look as if we aren't serious?"
"You can get anything for the right price."
"Judicial restraint does not mean judicial cowardice."
"I have to admit, it was nice to get somebody out of jail for a change."
Jack: "When Gillum crossed Green he said..."
Abbie: "That they were legally separated."
Jack: "Another one of those annoying details"
"I wouldn't call a pervasive pattern of insurance fraud that led to a man's death a civil matter. I'd call it murder."
"If they can take it, so can we."
"Alan Petrie and Richard Sanders made millions of dollars on the backs of the Hector Santiagos of the world. They're not champions of the people, they're just corrupt lawyers who preyed upon the most vulnerable among us in order to make themselves rich. Inducing hard-working men, desperate to feed their families, to risk their lives in car accidents with innocent drivers. Their scheme endangered all of us because it turned all of us into potential victims. Thirty visits to Dr. Raleigh's office to observe medical examinations that all ended with the same result. The same injuries. The same rear-end collision. You heard Dr. Raleigh testify that thousands of dollars changed hands in those visits, but where was the big money in their scam? Did it go to Bill Reed or Hector Santiago or even Dr. Raleigh? It went to these defendants, these...lawyers...who handled 212 identical cases and made 2.5 million dollars plus expenses doing it. Leaving the Mrs. Ndabes of the world with their 13%. Petrie and Sanders were running a fraud mill and Hector Santiago and the men like him were simply the grist. The bottom line is this: Hector Santiago is dead because these men paid him $200 to get into a cheap car and cross his fingers...and hold on tight."
"I can only deal with the case in front of me."
"If the law doesn't give people the sense it can protect them, they're going to end up protecting themselves."
Briscoe: "Anytime you think you can do my job better than me, just let me know."
McCoy: "Your job is to gather evidence we can use in court, not make headlines playing hero."
Green: "That's what you think we were doing? Let me tell you something. The next time you go into court and somebody draws a gun on you, tell me how you deal with it."
McCoy: "You don't like your job's requirements, Detective, turn in your badge."
Nora: "Why do you always believe in the worst in people, Jack?"
Jack: "Who, me?"
Nora: "I like to think I can do this job without becoming a cynic."
Jack: "I'm not a cynic. I get up every morning, hoping to find an honest man."
"I never thought I'd see the day when a court let politics prevent a murder prosecution."
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