The Wit and Wisdom of Richard Neely

In a comment to my post about an odd West Virginia duelling statute, Bo provides a nugget of wisdom from former WV Supreme Court Justice Richard Neely. Neely has a history of colorful rhetoric, on paper and in person (maybe jedi jawa will remember Neely's advice to us one summer in high school). As a criminal defense lawyer, my favorite Neely moment is this one:

Violent crime is almost always committed by the poor, the uneducated, or the stupid. Crimes of passion are committed by everyone, of course, but a trial involving a middle-class man meticulously planning the murder of his wife, so he can collect the insurance and run off with his secretary, is sensational precisely because it is so rare. Traveling salesmen who spend their off-hours robbing all-night grocery stores, married schoolteachers who take nights off to rape sixteen-year-old girls, and prosperous farmers who eliminate market competition in the neighborhood by setting fire to their neighbors’ barns are real oddities. Consequently, the entire criminal law system most often boils down to the powerful state with all its weapons – police, prosecutors, courts, prisons, and probation officers – going after poor, uneducated, stupid folks.

That's from Neely's dissent in State v. Rummer, 432 S.E.2d 39, 55 (1993). Which is very true. The mundanity of everyday crime would confound most folks who don't have daily contact with it.