Michael Connelly Quotes

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.

I don’t think its right to have a criminal justice system that puts innocent people to death.

If one of our fellow citizens can be executed with so much doubt surrounding his guilt, then the death penalty system in our country is unjust and outdated.

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

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

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.

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

Woe unto them ... who acquit the guilty for a bribe, and deprive the innocent of his right!

It is easier to learn to fly by flapping one's arms than it is to get a district attorney to admit having sent an innocent person to prison.

The judge is condemned when the guilty is absolved.

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.

Isn't all mankind ultimately executed for a crime it never committed?

When innocence trembles, it condemns the judge.

Death row is a nightmare to serial killers and ax murderers. For an innocent man, it's a life of mental torture that the human spirit is not equipped to survive.

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.

Do not be merciful, but be just, for mercy is bestowed upon the guilty criminal, while Justice is all that the innocent man requires.

The punishment of a criminal is an example to the rabble; but every decent man is concerned if an innocent person is condemned.

I don't trust Santa Barbara as far as I can spit. I am afraid that if I went back there, it's possible that I could be run through their system, their judicial system, and wind up in some county jail where I could be killed and I'm not gonna take that chance.

I just think it's so outrageous that fifteen years is the kind of minimum amount of time that any wrongfully convicted person spends in prison.

It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one.

The innocent are frequently punished instead of the guilty

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.

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.

My first job out of law school was representing people on death row in North Carolina, where I often saw the impact of hasty prosecutions.

Our system, for readily apparent reasons, is far superior to those in nations, mostly totalitarian, which presume an arrested person is guilty and place the burden on the accused to prove his innocence.