I've been wanting to post this for a while. Mike (Rellahan) wrote this and I just really liked it:

After describing the “there’s no crying in baseball” scene from A League of Their Own, he writes:

“There is however crying in the courtroom.

If you spend enough time visiting courtrooms when criminal cases are being heard, you will see a lot of crying people. There are crying defendants, crying victims, crying parents and siblings of defendants and victims. They cry tears of grief, tears of fear, tears of rage, and tears designed to win a favorable outcome in their case. There is a reason that every courtroom in the Chester County Justice Center comes equipped with a tipstaff and a box of tissues. People will cry, and someone needs to hand them the Kleenex.

I once saw a woman, who was called to testify in a trial against the man who attacked her at her home on her birthday in her bedroom, walk into Courtroom 7 in the Historic Courthouse already in full sob. She cried taking the witness stand, cried taking the oath, cried during her direct testimony, cried during cross-examination, and cried as she left the room. The only time I didn’t see her cry in the courtroom was when her attacker was sent to state prison for his crime. But she wasn’t smiling, either.

You never get used to the crying, because so much of it comes from the heart. But you come to expect it and accept it for what it is.”