Law & Order1990

Jack McCoy:
It's frustrating, as a prosecutor, when you're sure someone's a murderer but the only thing you can convict them of is tax evasion or assault. It's frustrating. But it's fundamental; you can't punish a crime that you can't prove. That's where the penal code meets the Declaration of Independence. What do you do as a cop, if you're sure there's a bad man on your beat but you don't have a made case against him? You don't frame him. You can't harass him. You make the case. You definitely don't shoot him. So, what should you do, as a citizen, if you're sure a monstrous predator has been released from prison because they couldn't hold him any more under the law? Write your own law? Run him down in the street? You make sure that the state enforces its rules. You get them for violating parole the day he moves in with Sheryl. You have the cops at the door. You make sure they watch him, and if they don't, if the system messes up, if he hurts someone, like Lowenstein could have hurt Sheryl's little girl, you sound the general alarm. You call the police and the papers, you go on TV, you make a scandal. Not a plan to commit murder. Joyce Draper is talented and brilliant. She might be the smartest person in this room. She's a sympathetic defendant, and Jacob Lowenstein was a repulsive victim. It doesn't matter. Joyce Draper murdered Jacob Lowenstein deliberately, with malice of forethought. And there's no reasonable doubt about that whatsoever. She didn't even really try to explain his blood on her car, because she's betting on you to let her get away with it. Citizens, no matter what their role, if it's a doctor, or a police officer, or a prosecutor, or a juror, may not take the law into their own hands. Joyce Draper belongs in jail, long enough to make it plain that we as a society will not tolerate citizens choosing who lives and who dies. And it's up to you to put her there.