Legal Error Quotes

Justice is justice though it's always delayed and finally done only by mistake.

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.

A dissent in a court of last resort is an appeal to the brooding spirit of the law, to the intelligence of a future day when a later decision may possibly correct the error …

Federal courts sit to ensure that individuals are not imprisoned in violation of the Constitution—not to correct errors of fact.

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.

Due process is a growth too sturdy to succumb to the infection of the least ingredient of error.

I don't think there's any question that someday somebody who is innocent will be executed in this country again.

I have done prison time for 13 years without any conviction.

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

I am not anti-death penalty, but I'm damned sure anti-the-wrong-guy-getting-executed.

The Court had better be right in its capital punishment cases and perhaps it not always is.

As, for the safety of society, we commit honest maniacs to Bedlam, so judges should be withdrawn from the bench, whose erroneous biases are leading us to dissolution.

What kind of system do we have when innocent people can sit on death row for 30 years?

People have died in jail that have been innocent.

What joy would I get from putting the wrong person behind bars?

[In drafting legislation:] There is no magic bullet to prevent judicial mistakes.

No nation can answer for perfect exactitude of proceedings in all their inferior courts. It suffices to provide a supreme judicature where all error and partiality will be ultimately corrected