Elizabeth Gilbert Quotes

The death penalty scares the hell out of me. We now see about one out of eight errors in these convictions.

I am here wrongfully convicted and wrongfully sentenced.

The innocent are frequently punished instead of the guilty

Like other human institutions, courts and juries are not perfect. One cannot have a system of criminal punishment without accepting the possibility that someone will be punished mistakenly.

People have died in jail that have been innocent.

I spent 30 years on Alabama's death row for a crime I did not commit.

Before I became famous I used to think there's no smoke without fire. But believe me, there can be a fire without smoke.

Of one thing, however, I am certain. Just as an execution without adequate safeguards is unacceptable, so too is an execution when the condemned prisoner can prove that he is innocent. The execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder.

A sentence of death and infamy was often founded on the slight and suspicious evidence of a child or a servant: the guilt [of the defendant] was presumed by the judges [due to the nature of the charge], and paederasty became the crime of those to whom no crime could be imputed.

We know our son. We know he's not a pedophile like some of these newscasters are saying. That is not true.

It would be great to do a story and get somebody who is innocent out of jail. That's a wonderful thing.

Here, I am looking for a document issued by a public attorney. I don't find. He is accused by the political leaders of the coalition, by his enemies, who said that he is guilty. That he deserves to be killed.

Just because you're convicted in a court room doesn't mean you're guilty of something.

Each time I told them I didn't kill my wife.

I've never been under the illusion that everybody on death row is innocent - far from it. My own guess is upwards of 90 percent are guilty. But a ten percent error rate if that's what it is, or even five percent, is really way too high.

It doesn't help to fight crime to put people in prison who are innocent.

How, possibly, could the police have made the 'mistake' of charging the wrong man with the notorious Red Light Bandit crimes? That also is something that is fully revealed in the Pandora's Box of facts I have prepared.

With the advent of DNA, we know that people have been convicted and sentenced to death who later proved not to be guilty of the crime.

The cops picked me up for attempted murder. I can still see the detectives, licking their chops. Thought they had me. Two weeks later, the cat came out of a coma and told the truth. I was innocent.

Every time when there is an exoneration, and there have been hundreds of them, and somebody walks out of jail after years, people ask, “how could this happen?” …. State sanctioned killing is just wrong.

People say I've had brushes with the law. That's not true. I've had brushes with overzealous prosecutors.

It is better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person should be condemned.

We cannot allow the spectacle of constant executions to be swept under the rug. We know that already over 100 individuals who were put on death row have been released. And we should shudder to think how many people have been sent to their deaths that were innocent.

The judge is condemned when the guilty is absolved.

Some wonder why I have such a feeling of concern over the imposition of the death penalty. I ask those who wonder how would you feel if you defended a man charged with murder, who was as innocent as any hon. member in this House at this very moment, who was convicted; whose appeal was dismissed, who was executed; and six months later the star witness for the Crown admitted that he, himself, had committed the murder and blamed it on the accused? That experience will never be effaced from my memory.