Political Quotes

“on February 18, 2018, New Hampshire lost one of its finest lawyers and humanitarians, Maurice Duane Geiger. He was 83 years old. Some might ask why, as a Senator from Vermont, I would call the Senate's attention to a resident of our neighbor to the east. In fact, Maury Geiger not only had close ties to Vermont where, in 1982, he cofounded the Rural Justice Center in Montpelier, he was in every respect a global citizen. Over his long career, he worked to improve access to justice in Haiti, Bangladesh, Rwanda, and several other countries. I met Maury Geiger years ago and will never forget going with him, my wife, Marcelle, and my staff member Tim Rieser to visit the national penitentiary in Port au Prince, Haiti. A more squalid example of a corrections facility would be hard to imagine. It was overflowing with thousands of impoverished men of all ages, sweltering in the heat and humidity, crammed into cement rooms with nothing to sleep on but the floor, with little food and vulnerable to AIDS, tuberculosis, and other dangerous diseases, and the vast majority had never been formally charged with any crime. Some had languished there for 2 or more years, far longer than any sentence they would have received if tried and convicted. Almost none had lawyers.…”