"This is a case that should define the difference between someone committing a wrong and committing a crime," he said.
He commits a wrong, but disguises his motives in a smoke trail of disinformation.
"Unless we fashion a way to provide liability protection to these contractors, we're committing a wrong".
But a lawyer for the family, Jonathan S. Abady, said the verdict was a "valuable public declaration" that the police officer, Craig Yokemick, had committed a wrong against Mr. Banks.
"I had to decide between committing a wrong - agreeing to try to entrap someone whom, based on our mutual dealings, I believe to be innocent - or standing up to fight for what I believe is right," he said.
"An apology is an admission that you have committed a wrong, and herein lies my problem," Assemblyman Richard A. Merkt, a Republican from Morris County, said from the floor of the Assembly when it was debating the resolution.
"No well-ordered republic should ever cancel the crimes of its citizens by their merits; but, having established reward for good actions and penalties for evil ones, and having rewarded a citizen for good conduct who afterwards commits a wrong, it should chastise him for that wrong without regard to his previous merits.
By Richard Harris The New Yorker, October 1, 1973 P. 29 "No well-ordered republic should ever cancel the crimes of its citizens by their merits; but, having established reward for good actions and penalties for evil ones, and having rewarded a citizen for good conduct who afterwards commits a wrong, it should chastise him for that wrong without regard to his previous merits.
