[Congressional Record Volume 162, Number 54 (Monday, April 11, 2016)]
[Senate]
[Page S1851]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       TRIBUTE TO MAURICE GEIGER

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I wish to recognize Maurice Geiger, known 
by family and friends as Maury, an extraordinary individual who, 
although a longtime resident of Conway, NH, with his wife, Nancy, is 
deserving of the title of honorary Vermonter.
  Maury Geiger's lengthy career began in the U.S. Navy back in the 
1950s, from where he went on to Georgetown Law School and jobs at the 
Bureau of Prisons and the Department of Justice. He later served as a 
county prosecutor in New Hampshire, founded the Rural Justice Center in 
Montpelier, VT, where I first got to know him, became a national expert 
in court administration, and has provided advice and guidance to help 
reform dysfunctional justice systems in foreign countries for more than 
two decades.
  In no country has Maury devoted more passion, time, and energy than 
Haiti, where justice has long been more of a fantasy than a reality for 
the majority of the Haitian people.
  

  Since the 1990s, Maury has traveled to Haiti scores of times, often 
paying out of his own pocket. His purpose was simple: to help improve 
access to justice for thousands of people caught up in a byzantine 
system in which it is common to be detained in squalid, grossly 
overcrowded, sweltering prisons rampant with life-threatening diseases, 
for months and years, without ever seeing a lawyer or judge or being 
formally charged with any crime.
  Over the years, often against great odds, Maury has worked to train 
numerous Haitian prosecutors, judges, and other judicial officials and 
to institute recordkeeping systems to improve case management and 
reduce the chance that inmates are forgotten or their case files are 
lost.
  Maury is not only among a handful of the most experienced experts in 
the field of court administration; he is a person of exemplary 
integrity. He has never had the slightest interest in profiting 
himself, as his modest lifestyle demonstrates, but rather to do 
whatever he could to provide help and dignity to those who are the 
least able to help themselves. He has done so, year after year, with 
uncommon compassion and commitment, never losing his wry sense of 
humor, in a country where the political will for justice reform at the 
highest levels of government has often been weak or lacking altogether.
  Maury is in Haiti again this week, and I want him to know that the 
example he has set of selflessness, of caring, commitment to human 
rights and equal access to justice, and of an unwavering belief in the 
basic dignity of all people regardless of their station in life, is one 
that every law student, every lawyer, every prosecutor, every judge, 
and every prison warden should strive to emulate.

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