- D.A. Adam Schiff: You can't force the other side to play. You put a check in the win column and you count your blessings.
- Executive A.D.A. Ben Stone: In any other circumstances, that's exactly what I'd do.
- D.A. Adam Schiff: Why does this kid deserve such special attention?
- Executive A.D.A. Ben Stone: Because he's pleading for the wrong reason. His lawyer tells him that he's born bad. We tell him he's raised bad. He buys both stories. Sees his life as a dead end.
- D.A. Adam Schiff: Maybe he knows his life better than you do. Your job is to convict not to rehabilitate.
- Executive A.D.A. Ben Stone: He's a 14-year-old kid who gave up.
- D.A. Adam Schiff: So you're doing him a favor.
- Executive A.D.A. Ben Stone: If he gave up his illusions, right, but he gave up hope and I drove him to that. Now anything might happen to that kid in prison.
- D.A. Adam Schiff: Gary Gilmore. Westley Dodd. Two unrepentant killers. Everybody wants them dead until they agree and then we turn them into folk heroes.
- Executive A.D.A. Ben Stone: We had nothing to do with their fates.
- D.A. Adam Schiff: You want them to start naming churches after you, I'd get another profession. Take the kid's plea. Move on to the next case.
- Chris Pollit: [tells his lawyer and Ben that he wants to go to jail] You keep talking about how I got bad genes, I'm all screwed up, I can't change.
- Helen Brolin: I'm just trying to sway the jury in your favor.
- Chris Pollit: What, you're lying?
- Executive A.D.A. Ben Stone: We ask that the defendant be sentenced to a youth facility until his 18th birthday, then transferred to Attica.
- Chris Pollit: Why?
- Executive A.D.A. Ben Stone: We're trying to save your life, son.
- Chris Pollit: What's the point?
- Chris Pollit: I want to go to jail.
- Executive A.D.A. Ben Stone: Why?
- Chris Pollit: Doesn't anybody listen? I killed John, I'd do it again. I get mad enough, I don't know what I do.
- Tracy Pollit: What did I know about having kids? I was a kid myself.
- [smokes and drinks while pregnant]
- Claire Kincaid: [dryly] And now you have it all figured out.
- Tracy Pollit: You got a job and an education, this is all I got. Nobody's taking *this* baby away from me.