"Atticus eased his arm on the corner of the chair. When concentrating it was his practice to finger his watchchain and rummage abstractedly in his watchpocket. Today his hands were still. “Hank, I suspect when we know all the facts in the case the best that can be done for the boy is for him to plead guilty. Now, isn’t it better for us to stand up with him in court than to have him fall into the wrong hands?” A smile spread slowly across Henry’s face. “I see what you mean, Mr. Finch.”
“Well, I don’t, ” said Jean Louise. “What wrong hands?”
Atticus turned to her. “Scout, you probably don’t know it, but the NAACP-paid lawyers are standing around like buzzards down here waiting for things like this to happen—”
“You mean colored lawyers?”
Atticus nodded. “Yep. We’ve got three or four in the state now. They’re mostly in Birmingham and places like that, but circuit by circuit they watch and wait, just for some felony committed by a Negro against a white person —you’d be surprised how quick they find out—in they come and … well, in terms you can understand, they demand Negroes on the juries in such cases. They subpoena the jury commissioners, they ask the judge to step down, they raise every legal trick in their books—and they have ’em aplenty—they try to force the judge into error. Above all else, they try to get the case into a Federal court where they know the cards are stacked in their favor. It’s already happened in our nextdoor-neighbor circuit, and there’s nothing in the books that says it won’t happen here.”" NH