“Ride or die”. It’s the modern shorthand for fierce loyalty; the friend who’d drop everything, grab two shovels, and meet you at midnight with no questions asked. It sounds romantic in theory. But in law? It’s called being an accessory after the fact, writes Rebecca Ward, MBA.
Those outside the legal world often tell me, confidently, that only guilty people get arrested. I used to argue. I don’t anymore. I’ve learnt that logic rarely wins against emotion, and human nature has a stubborn way of siding with the familiar over the factual.
Still, let’s indulge in a thought experiment. Imagine a friend rings in a panic. “Something terrible has happened,” they whisper. “I need you to come, now.” You don’t ask questions. You grab your keys. The question is not should I go, but how fast can I get there?
But would you? Could you? Should you?
As Seinfeld put it:
George Costanza: [to Jerry] You’re a good friend. If you killed somebody, I wouldn’t turn you in.
[George leaves]
Jerry: Hey, Kramer, if I killed somebody, would you turn me in?
Cosmo Kramer: Definitely.
Jerry: You’re kidding!
Cosmo Kramer: No, no. I would turn you in.
Jerry: You would turn me in?
Cosmo Kramer: I wouldn’t even think about it.
Jerry: I can’t believe I’m hearing this. You’re supposed to be a friend of mine!
Cosmo Kramer: Well, what kind of person are you going around killing people?
Jerry: Well, I am sure I had a good reason!
Cosmo Kramer: Well, if you’ll kill this person, who’s to say I wouldn’t be next?
Jerry: But you know me!
Cosmo Kramer: I thought I did!
Kramer, as usual, is the moral realist: loyalty has limits.
The law: Loyalty v liability
In Australia, “accessory after the fact” isn’t just a moral quandary; it’s a criminal offence. Under section 349 of the Criminal Code Act 1899 (Qld), anyone who “knowing a person to have committed an indictable offence, receives, comforts, or assists them in order to enable them to escape punishment” faces up to seven years’ imprisonment.
It doesn’t matter if you didn’t swing the shovel; the moment you help hide it, you’re in the game. The law draws a bright line: you can love someone, but you can’t help them evade justice.
It’s the system’s way of saying, we understand empathy, but not at the expense of accountability. Yet psychology tells us something more complicated: good people do bad things when the request comes from someone they love.
The psychology: Love, loyalty, and cognitive dissonance
Criminal psychology isn’t black and white; it’s beige, foggy, and often tinted with denial. The notion that “only bad people get arrested” ignores decades of research showing how situational pressure, moral reasoning, and emotional attachment can twist judgement.
Think of Milgram’s obedience experiments (1963). Participants, ordinary citizens, administered what they believed were deadly electric shocks simply because someone in authority told them to. The moral horror wasn’t that sadists were discovered in the suburbs; it was that normal people complied.
Now replace authority with affection. Instead of a lab coat, it’s your best friend, your partner, your brother. The psychological mechanisms are similar: obedience, rationalisation, loyalty, but the motivator is love, not fear. If obedience explains behaviour, affection explains persistence.
This is what social psychologists call moral disengagement: the ability to silence the inner voice that says, “This is wrong,” by reframing the act. You’re not helping a criminal, you tell yourself; you’re helping family. It’s why we hear statements like, “I’m a good person; I was just helping my brother.” But the law doesn’t grade goodness. It measures conduct.
The myth of ‘good people’ and ‘bad people’
The “good versus bad” binary is a psychological comfort blanket. It helps us sleep at night, believing that the line between morality and criminality is fixed; that people like us don’t end up in handcuffs.
But ask any defence lawyer or forensic psychologist, and they’ll tell you: good people cross lines every day. Sometimes out of panic. Sometimes out of love. Sometimes, out of the delusion that their motives will absolve them.
In one Australian case, a mother helped her son hide evidence after a fatal hit-and-run. She didn’t see herself as a criminal; she saw herself as a mother protecting her child. Her sentence recognised that maternal instinct, but it didn’t erase it. The court understood her motive. It still condemned her act.
It’s a paradox the law understands, but the heart refuses to accept: love may mitigate motive, but it doesn’t erase consequence.
The truth is, most people overestimate their moral courage. In controlled studies of ethical decision making, participants consistently claim they would act with integrity under pressure. Yet when faced with real-world dilemmas, loyalty, fear, and self-interest win almost every time.
As Hannah Arendt observed, evil is often banal, not monstrous, just human. Most wrongdoing doesn’t emerge from malice, but from the small, silent decisions we make to look away when comfort is at stake.
When loyalty becomes liability
The phrase “ride or die” might make for a good tattoo, but in court, it reads poorly. There’s no exemption for devotion. No clause that says, “But he’s my best mate.”
When you help someone cover a crime, drive them from the scene, delete evidence, wash the blood off a jacket, you become part of the act. The legal system can be merciful in sentencing, but it is rarely sympathetic in logic.
The moment you shift from witness to participant, your story becomes a confession. And yet, it’s deeply human to empathise with those who fall into this trap. Love isn’t rational; it’s protective. The problem is, so is the law. It protects the collective over the individual.
The measure of justice
The law cannot codify love, but it can define its limits. Loyalty without boundaries is not a virtue; it is negligence dressed as devotion. Justice asks less that we stop caring and more that we care correctly; not in secret, not in haste, but in truth. Because when love becomes lawless, the person we protect most may be the one we ultimately destroy.
Rebecca Ward is an MBA-qualified management consultant with a focus on mental health. She is the managing director of Barristers’ Health, which supports the legal profession through management consulting and psychotherapy. Barristers’ Health was founded in memory of her brother, Steven Ward, LLB.
