Jack McCoy quotes from Law & Order

McCoy

This isn't a referendum on prostitution. It isn't a referendum on rape. You're here to render a verdict on her client's credibility. She says she was raped. What's her evidence? "Keene was a bully. My husband believes me. So should you." In the meantime, she suffered no injuries, she destroyed evidence, she lied to the police. It was only when she was backed into a corner that she cried rape, that she wrapped herself in the right of self-defense. But she wasn't defending her virtue. She didn't shoot Gilbert Keene to keep from performing an act that she had willingly performed on dozens of other men. She killed him to protect a secret. You've all seen what lengths she went to, to avoid Mac Bernum, to hide her identity. Who can blame her? She didn't want to lose her husband, her family, her comfortable home. Those things, she would kill for. But those things do not justify the taking of a life! The threat of deadly physical force does, or rape does, or kidnapping, or robbery. But none of those things happened in that car. What happened in that car was a cold and calculated thing. A woman killed her blackmailer, not her rapist. That's who Gilbert Keene was. That's how he got sex. He didn't rape those other women. He blackmailed them. I don't want you to convict her because she's a prostitute. I'm asking you to convict her because her story is a lie.

McCoy

:[after a California rules to nullify an extradition order] Speak up, Your Honor. There are some people in the Bronx who didn't hear you.

McCoy

Everyone likes a good story. Eddie Newman has made a career putting stories on film. And the defense in this case has told you a very good story about a sleazy psychiatrist and a man who believed he'd committed a murder, but recently realized that he didn't. What actually happened here is less complicated and far more sordid. A bitter, angry man viciously killed his ex-wife, dismembered her while she was still alive, and then lied about it. There's no clever twist to the plot. It's just the messy, ugly truth. Mr. Gorton has appealed to what he calls reasonable doubt. But reasonable doubt is not any doubt. God has given you all the gift of common sense. Use it. [picks up Newman's sword] Eddie Newman used this weapon to hack to death not the woman he claimed he loved, but the woman he calls a vindictive bitch. Find him guilty of murder.

McCoy

I'm playing legal tiddy-winks with these punks. What I'd really like to do is take them out by Battery Park and hang them up by the scrotum.

McCoy

Mr. Pressman is right. This is not a First Amendment issue. We can all agree that what we see powerfully affects us, but that doesn't excuse us from being decent human beings, or from making moral choices. What we choose to watch, and how we react, is up to us. The baby boom generation, to which Congressman Maxwell and I both belong, grew up watching hundreds of hours of violent TV. We dressed up like Davy Crockett, with his trusty rifle, Old Betsy. Like Hopalong Cassidy, with his pearl-handled six-shooters. And what was the result of all this make-believe TV-inspired violence? We grew up to be a generation that marched against war, and preached peace, love, and flower power. And yes, Mr. Pressman watched the Vietnam War on TV, and how did that change him? I looked up his record. He became a conscientious objector, and a Harvard Law professor. Dangerous guy, huh? We are creatures of free will and moral choice. No matter what we see, read, or hear, we still make choices. Eddie Chandler, a man who murdered and tortured two innocent people, chose evil.

McCoy

This case is not a debate about euthanasia. It's about a thrill-killing by a monster masquerading as an angel of mercy. Michael Sutter is dead. He was murdered. That's all that matters.

McCoy

[after Abbie Carmichael has a seven-year-old boy arrested without consulting McCoy] I hear you're adding a children's wing to Death Row.

McCoy

If the police department doesn't want to be embarrassed by its behavior, perhaps it shouldn't behave that way!

McCoy

The Crusades. Islamic jihad. Holy wars. There is an oxymoron if ever there was one. Are these slaughters excused because they were perpetrated in the name of God? And those are the easy cases. Rosa Halacy isn't some bloodthirsty crusader bent on wiping out the infidel. She's a woman who heard the voice of God tell her to save a child from the Devil. What do you make of Rosa Halacy and her calling? I can't answer it myself. Mr. Wade says you can't convict her because she's a good person, maybe even a holy person. I'm not sure I disagree with his characterization, but it brings you right back to the contradiction. Can a righteous person commit a wrongful act? What I do know is that Rosa Halacy is flesh and blood, like you and me. We can't let Rosa Halacy assert for herself the power we vest in our Supreme Being. She may hear God, but she may not play God. Just because she has a divine mission, it doesn't exempt her from the code of human behavior. When she squeezed the life out of Kira Grayson in the back room of her apartment, she violated that code. Her passion for God, however tangible and heartfelt, rendered her oblivious to the mortality of Kira Grayson. She's responsible for the consequences of her convictions. And just as her God holds her accountable, so should we.

McCoy

It's Jonestown without the Kool-Aid.

McCoy

Tell Mr. Margolis he can stuff his motion to dismiss.

McCoy

Following the rules does not put you above the law. Just ask the Swiss bankers who appropriated the unclaimed accounts of Holocaust victims. Following the rules does not explain how someone who runs a bank could be so incompetent, so gullible. There can be only one explanation. Mr. Radford willingly turned a blind eye to what was obviously a criminal enterprise. And the Russian mob didn't have to cut off his uncle's hands to get him to do it. All they had to do was wave a fat commission in front of him. Now, some might think that money laundering is just some white-collar crime far removed from our everyday concerns. Let me remind you what money laundering is really about. Mr. Radford made his commission on the backs of these people. This country has always been a beacon to the world for liberty and justice. That's why we keep our borders open. But we're also a beacon for another kind of people, for criminals and con men. We rely on the law to protect us from them. Sometimes, that's not enough. Do we need more law, less freedom? Do we cross out parts of the Constitution? I've learned that's not the answer. The answer is that each one of us is responsible to everyone else. Not one of us can afford to turn a blind eye. By respecting the laws we do have, by living up to the true meaning of the word "citizen", we preserve our common good. Through his deliberate ignorance, Mr. Radford allowed a criminal enterprise to flourish. Innocent people to be killed. He allowed a cancer to grow. This is where it has to stop. Here in this court room, with you.

McCoy

Elias Grace suckered these people out of millions of dollars and he turns out to be the biggest sucker of them all.

McCoy

May it please the court. Man has only the rights he can defend. Our most basic right is life. It's enshrined not only in our Constitution, but in the charter of the United Nations. The prohibition against taking a life is found in our most ancient texts and in the statutes of every nation. Every murder, whether in Brooklyn, Santiago, Rwanda or Kosovo, demands punishment by whatever legal means possible. Otherwise, the right to life is just an empty promise. The law against murder applies to all. No matter the perpetrator, the victim, or the country where the murder is committed. It is the one moral law that recognizes no national, racial or religious boundaries. It can tolerate no exceptions. There is one law. One law. And when that law is broken, it is the duty of every officer of any court to rise up in defense of that law, and bring their full power and diligence to bear against the law breaker. Because, man has only those rights he can defend. Only those rights.

McCoy

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 an opportunity just to hear himself talk.