It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.
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.
Technology is neutral: It convicts and finds innocents. We must make it a regularized part of the system, giving defendants access to DNA testing and evidence whenever it might be relevant.
All prisons are brimming over with innocence. It is those who cram their fellows into them, in the name of empty ideas, who are the only guilty ones.
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.
Maimonides taught that it is better that 10 criminals go free than let one innocent man be executed. The Innocence Project represents that point of view.
I was imprisoned as an innocent person, it's common sense not to go back.
People plead guilty or admit to crimes they didn't commit for various reasons. Certain interrogation procedures produce high rates of false confessions.
I will prove my innocence, ... I guarantee the Filipino people that I will be vindicated because the truth is on my side.
I hear much of people's calling out to punish the guilty, but very few are concerned to clear the innocent.
The death penalty scares the hell out of me. We now see about one out of eight errors in these convictions.
And that's the mission of The Innocence Project in New York, is to exonerate people who have been wrongfully convicted, and also work from a policy angle with Congress and state legislatures to prevent future wrongful convictions.
Let the guilty bury the innocent, and let no one change the evidence
It would be great to do a story and get somebody who is innocent out of jail. That's a wonderful thing.
The advent of DNA testing, and the number of convictions thrown out, has confirmed that we've put LOTS of innocent people to death. There need not be any other argument against death penalty.
Most states in the union where the death penalty is theoretically on the books don't have executions.
I don't think there's any question that someday somebody who is innocent will be executed in this country again.
Perhaps the bleakest fact of all is that the death penalty is imposed not only in a freakish and discriminatory manner, but also in some cases upon defendants who are actually innocent.
I directed and produced Conviction, a movie about a man who spent 18 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. I got to know Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck very well - he's a character in the movie - and I got very passionate about the cause. It's just so inherently dramatic.
I'm presently incarcerated. Convicted of a crime I didn't even commit. Hah! "Attempted murder"? Now honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel prize for attempted chemistry? Do they?
I am not anti-death penalty, but I'm damned sure anti-the-wrong-guy-getting-executed.
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.
There is no client as scary as an innocent man.
Suspects who are innocent of a crime should. But the thing is, you don't have many suspects who are innocent of a crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime, then he is not a suspect.
I was just really appalled, and I really kept quiet until I saw the governor [Rick Perry] get on and repeat the same words that the prosecution had used in the penalty phase: that he [Todd Willingham] was a monster. And that got me to get on to the computer and connect with some of the media and say: "I have his letters. He wasn't a monster. He was a caring individual." Let them see another side.
