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# Moments that made me stop
- URL: https://www.sandrapiteiu.com/moments-that-made-me-stop/
- Published: 2026-09-04T17:31:16.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-04T17:35:04.000Z
- Author: Sandra Piteiu

I entered the magistracy in 2013\. After two years as a judicial auditor, I became a judge. **I walked into the courtroom with a code in my hand and the belief that the law was enough to deliver justice**.

For five years I ruled on civil cases. Divorces, custody, forced executions, contracts, and many, many more. Hundreds of files, the same patterns repeated without end. Every moment spent in civil law felt like an eternity.

Why do I say this?

I saw, from the bench, how much principles are worth. Very little, once they stand against an interest. People came in with speeches about fairness and left willing to do anything to win.

I felt the pain of children asked by a stranger: “Who would you like to live with from now on?” There is a silence before that answer that I still hear. The eyes searching for the door, for the parent who must not be upset. Children made to choose between two people they love, in front of someone they are seeing for the first time.

I understood quickly how much people betray for money. More often, they betray themselves. Siblings who hadn’t spoken in years over a strip of land. People who gave up their peace, their relationships, the image they held of themselves, for a sum that never bought them the peace they were looking for. And I saw that an oath, even with a hand on the Bible, stops no one from chasing their interest while hiding the truth. They swore calmly and lied in the same breath.

Because, in the end, everything is relative.

**The law stayed the same. The people in front of me, never**. 

And when I thought I had seen it all, I changed the Code of Civil Procedure for the Code of Criminal Procedure.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/36/63/3663cdda-ffbd-492b-8643-876a3f2c80e0/content/images/2026/09/https-3A-2F-2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2Fb1462452-1567-442a-bc8d-9a7407a09f97_3840x2560.jpeg)

There, the stakes were no longer a plot of land or a maintenance payment. There, what hung in the balance was a person’s freedom.

The first thing that changes is the room. In civil law, the dispute arrives as paper. In criminal law, it walks in with an escort. A file is a stack of pages you will close at the end of the day. The man standing three meters away, waiting to hear what you decided about the next eight years of his life, does not close the same way.

The second thing that changes is the clock. Civil law gives you terms, adjournments, time to think. Criminal law gives you a night on duty and a deadline measured in hours. You read, you listen, you decide whether a person sleeps at home or in a cell. Then you go home and try to sleep yourself.

The third thing that changes is the arithmetic of truth. In a civil file, two versions of a story cost someone an apartment. In a criminal file, two versions of a story cost someone their life as they knew it, and the person sitting on the other side of the room is waiting for exactly the opposite outcome. Both look at you. Both believe they are right. Only one leaves satisfied, and often neither does.

What never changed was the relativity. People still lied. People still betrayed, still calculated, still chose their interest and dressed it up as principle. The mechanism was identical. Only the currency was different. In civil law they were trading money. In criminal law they were trading years.

And then there is the last word. Before the court retires to deliberate, the defendant has the last word. No questions, no lawyer, no strategy. Just a person and whatever they have left to say. Some say nothing. Some say everything. Some apologize to the wrong person. And some use it to lie one final time.

**That moment taught me more than any code**.

Because nobody improvises their character in the courtroom. Nobody decides who they are while standing in front of a judge. Everyone arrives already decided. The file only writes it down. Whatever a person had settled about themselves long before, in rooms with no witnesses and no consequences, that is what walks in through the door.

Everyone gets a last word. Almost nobody uses it to ***become someone new.***