Law & Order (TV Series)

Night & Fog (1993)

Michael Moriarty: Executive ADA Ben Stone

Photos 

Quotes 

• David Steinmetz : Heinrich, an SS officer - he came to our home. He gave us cake; we barely had bread. He told me that if I could convince my neighbors to cooperate, none of us would be harmed. I was 19; if I didn't do it, somebody else would have. People lived a few months... weeks... days longer; that's what it was about. People who were not there... they could never understand.

  Executive A.D.A. Ben Stone : Your wife was there, sir; she understood very well what you did. And that's why you killed her.

• Executive A.D.A. Ben Stone : Things haven't changed much, have they, sir? Fifty years ago, you protected yourself at the expense of others. Your wife is now dead, and your daughter's gonna go to prison so you can go free.

• D.A. Adam Schiff : A woman was murdered in our jurisdiction. That's our only priority.

  Executive A.D.A. Ben Stone : So we shield him?... Poland is not entitled to punish him for the greater evil?

  D.A. Adam Schiff : Greater evil? Since when did you get so philosophical? This office doesn't care about Poles, or Nazis, any more than it does about Serbs or Croats. We're not in the evil business; we're in the crime business.

  Executive A.D.A. Ben Stone : Adam, I may be wrong, but... I thought, of all people, you would want...

  D.A. Adam Schiff : The man killed his wife? Try him; convict him. That's all I want.

• Executive A.D.A. Ben Stone : Last month, my daughter was reading "Diary of Anne Frank"; she thought it was fiction. So I'm runnin' in circles with this case.

• [last lines] 

  Executive A.D.A. Ben Stone : They beat you, they starve you; makes me wonder what I would have done.

  D.A. Adam Schiff : There's no Supreme Court of Ethics, my friend. Sometimes the only yardstick is: Can you look yourself in the mirror, the day after?

  Paul Robinette : Well, what about Mara? By insisting we seal the files, she was still protecting her father.

  Executive A.D.A. Ben Stone : She wasn't protecting her father. She was protecting her son.