Law & Order1990

Jack McCoy:
Like it or not, in evaluating the case against Mitchell Lowell, Detective Fontana's actions are irrelevant and must be ignored. Like it or not, the law says that you must focus only on what the defendant did. I'm realistic; I know you're good people, and as such, it's next to impossible that you could ignore what you heard, or didn't hear, in this courtroom. And I also know that by asking you to weigh the defendant's actions against the police officer's, Mr. Dworkin is, in effect, appealing to your fundamental sense of fair play. Is that a bad thing? Heck, what's good for the goose is good for the gander; we all know that. Fairness is all. Or is it? Does Mr. Dworkin's fairness leave any room for justice? That fairness exists in a vacuum, while justice, on the other hand, cannot. In Mr. Dworkin's vacuum world, we'd have to treat a rapist the same as we'd treat a man who made love to his wife. After all, they've both performed the same physical act; it's only fair. In Mr. Dworkin's vacuum world, the terrorist must be treated the same as the soldier who tracks him down and kills him. Of course he does; each of them has taken a human life, and what's fair is only fair. In Mr. Dworkin's vacuum world, the man who takes a little girl hostage while attempting to rob a bank, as long as he feeds her well, must be treated better than a cop who used excessive force in trying to save the life of that innocent child. It's only fair, but is it just? The benchmark of a civilized society is the quality of its justice. In this society, we put kidnappers and bank robbers behind bars.