Nick Yarris Quotes

To admit guilt for nonexistent crimes is unacceptable to me.

The innocent are frequently punished instead of the guilty

The woman who runs the Pennsylvania Innocence Project told me that there's a man she's been trying to get out of prison for 26 years. Every night before she goes to bed, she thinks, 'What is he doing?' She says you don't sleep. And yet, she has the greatest sense of humor and this light that comes out of her.

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

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

I left the world of jail with plenty of relief but, more than anything, with a sense of unease that I still can't quite shake.

I'd like to think that if I were in prison for a crime I didn't commit, someone would be trying to get me the hell out of there.

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

I had to grow up in prison for something I did not do.

I hear much of people's calling out to punish the guilty, but very few are concerned to clear the innocent.

I was no assassin. I got out during the amnesty because I had not committed any violent crimes.

I could have easily been a statistic. Growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., it was easy - a little too easy - to get into trouble. Surrounded by poor schools, lack of resources, high unemployment rates, poverty, gangs and more, I watched as many of my peers fell victim to a vicious cycle of diminished opportunities and imprisonment.

I have not killed anyone. They will not let me.

I went to prison, I paid my bill.

The last thing I would have ever expected to happen to me in my life would be that, in fact, I would be accused of doing something wrong and maybe even something criminal.

We've sent 130 men to death row to be executed in this country, at least 130 that we know of, who have later have been exonerated because they were either innocent, or they were not fairly tried. That's 130 people that we've locked down on death row. And they've spent years there.

It is only losers that are prosecuted.

I've worked in the prison system for five years, and most of those folks in prison didn't have a direction.

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.

I’m not necessarily against the death penalty. But I am damn sure against the wrong man getting executed.

We spend ninety-five cents of every dollar for prisons on pure custody; iron bars and stone walls; and they dehumanize. We spend five cents on hope—health mental health, education, vocational training, employment services, family guidance, community services. Most of these inmates have never been to a dentist. Psychoses and neuroses—a major cause of crime—are immense.

There is but one sufficient excuse for Christians in suffering such evils to exist in prisons in this country, and that is that they are not acquainted with the real state of things.

A person who is no longer with us has a rather difficult time proving his innocence …. In Texas and elsewhere in the country, people’s innocence is determined by their income.

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

It is better to destroy 100 innocent people than to let one guilty one escape.