"DEFENDING DOESN'T MEAN EXCUSING.."

Jacques Verges, the famed, flamboyant, French defense attorney died at age 88 in Paris on August 15th. In a career that spanned over fifty years, Verges defended the most radical and despised of European defendants, including Carlos the Jackal- the marxist terrorist, and Klaus Barbie, the  "butcher of Lyon" who sent thousands of French Jews to their death at concentration camps in WWII. 

Here are the quotes we wish you to consider and discuss: 

“I would have defended Hitler,” he told the German news magazine Der Spiegel in 2008. “Defending doesn’t mean excusing. A lawyer doesn’t judge, doesn’t condemn, doesn’t acquit. He tries to understand.”

“There is an aspect of professional challenge,” he once told The Post of his client roster. “If I were a doctor I would rather have done the first open heart surgery than have treated 1,000 colds.”

“A man is never all black or all white,” he once told an interviewer. “In the heart of the worst criminal there is always a secret garden. And in the heart of the most honest man, a nest of the most terrible reptiles.”

The Washington Post article is here. 

There is value in examining extremes.  How many of us are just treating colds? 

Enjoy your weekend.