Lynne Stewart Quotations

If they can do this to me, they will do it to other people.

I'm a lawyer. I fight for my clients. that's what my job is, ... I'm going to continue to be a lawyer, hopefully, until they carry me out. But I sincerely hope it isn't the government that does the carrying.

It certainly is a great relief, ... It's also wonderful to know that the case maybe has opened a way for the use of this (1996) law to be circumscribed, curtailed a little bit.

I've been doing this work for 30 years, and I am well aware of the bright line and I have never stepped over it, and I certainly didn't do it in this case either.

Archie was always the spokesman for the Stewart family. But he's not the namesake.

The bright line says the lawyer doesn't become part of the criminal enterprise, whatever that enterprise may be,

It's one of the real sacred precincts of the law -- that your client should be absolutely free to tell you whatever he needs to tell to you, and you should be free to give whatever advice you need to give.

It's so hard to fight against ghosts, when they say there's evidence and it's not there.

It's hard to be zealous when you are looking over your shoulder and thinking, 'Could the government indict me for this?'

Their car was ... running out of gas. They had all this legislation, all this money, all this homeland security, and they had very little to show for it, so they went back into the files and dug us up,

I'm very shook up, and surprised, and disappointed that the jury didn't see what we saw,

The cherished freedoms that we really need to defend, among them being the right to counsel, the right to having a lawyer that you consult with in absolute privacy -- that's been breached in this case,

The only thing we have is each other.

Put the strong, masculine figure in a school with tough kids and you have a certain control. It's very demeaning to the kids and very demeaning to the tough, black guy, but that's how they worked it.

You're working not for the corporate interest, not for the government interest, not for your own self-interest. You have a higher calling.

Your goal is to make a better world through the work you do. It's not always possible, and you have to earn a living.

My anti-authoritarian instincts let me directly to criminal defense work.

If you make a mistake as a prosecutor, your mistakes go home, whereas if you make a mistake defending, they go to jail.

I took anything that came across my doorstep. I started getting a reputation.

I'm particularly committed to the political people who needed defense. I understand that they're fighting a bigger war than just, "Let me go get some money for cocaine tonight."

I would never take a case that had to do with abusing children. They're the true innocents.

I couldn't add my talent, which is prodigious, to a defense of someone even accused of hurting a child.

I would never defend a cop - though I did on a few private cases, when cops were acting not as cops but as private citizens.

The prosecution makes all the important decisions: what's charged, how much is charged, whether you can get a decent offer. Every defendant becomes an informant today.

Lawyering is very individualistic. There are lawyers who are going to be that persistent birddog, they're never going to give up on the client, they're going to defend people.

There are lawyers who believe in client-centered representation and who are dedicated on the same level I feel I was dedicated.

There's a lot of active radical thought today but not much action.

You've got to learn to handle the press because god knows the government does all the time.

The only way not to be afraid is to join with other people who are also afraid.

I got a job as a children's librarian at PS 175 in Harlem, and that changed everything. That was an epiphany. I didn't know Harlem existed. I didn't know there was such a place, because I grew up in white Queens, where five miles is 100 miles.

I don't have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people's revolution.