Caryl Chessman Quotes

Wrongful convictions happen every week in every state in this country. And they happen for all the same reasons. Sloppy police work. Eyewitness identification is the most - is the worst type almost. Because it's wrong about half the time. Think about that.

I am here wrongfully convicted and wrongfully sentenced.

The innocent are frequently punished instead of the guilty

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

They got me for possession of something that was long, long gone.

I therefore believe that our system does not have a word for failed trial, and that is where the American public does not realize that our criminal justice system sometimes makes mistakes.

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.

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

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.

Society is now less convinced of the absolute accuracy of the criminal justice system.

People have died in jail that have been innocent.

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

It is extremely hard to bring a claim for compensation against the police or the Crown Prosecution Service, even when a person has been charged with an offence and later cleared.

We have over the years proven again and again that every piece of evidence used to convict me has been false. The FBI with its unlimited resources has done everything it possibly can to keep me in prison.

As long as you have capital punishment there is no guarantee that innocent people won't be put to death.

I was falsely arrested twice, slandered and defamed.

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.

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 idea that there aren't mistakes made constantly in the judicial system is too obvious even to need to mention.

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.

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

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

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.

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.