Lorenzo Snow Quotes

People have died in jail that have been innocent.

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

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.

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

We have a situation where a young man is basically convicted of his own murder.

I just spent 11 and a half months in a maximum-security jail, got shot five times, and was wrongly convicted of a crime I didn't commit.

Major miscarriages of justice have occurred because of the absence of proper legal representation.

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.

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.

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.

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

In 1921 the temper of the times made it the special duty of a prosecutor and a court engaged in trying two Italian radicals before a jury of native New Englanders to keep the instruments of justice free from the infection of passion or prejudice. In the case of Sacco and Vanzetti no such restraints were respected. By systematic exploitation of the defendants' alien blood, their imperfect knowledge of English, their unpopular social views, and their opposition to the war, the District Attorney invoked against them a riot of political passion and patriotic sentiment; and the trial judge connived at -- one had almost written, cooperated in -- the process.... Judge Thayer's opinion stands unmatched for discrepancies between what the record discloses and what the opinion conveys. His 25,000-word document cannot accurately be described otherwise than as a farrago of misquotations, misrepresentations, suppressions, and mutilations. The disinterested inquirer could not possibly derive from it a true knowledge of the new evidence that was submitted to him as the basis for a new trial. The opinion is literally honeycombed with demonstrable errors, and a spirit alien to judicial utterance permeates the whole.

There are many innocent people in prison.

In a society of criminals, the innocent man goes to jail.

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?

How, possibly, could the police have made the 'mistake' of charging the wrong man with the notorious Red Light Bandit crimes? That also is something that is fully revealed in the Pandora's Box of facts I have prepared.

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

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.

When we look at our justice system, we have this image of a balancing scale: truth and justice, right and wrong. But for years, our system has been lopsided, where it's not about truth and justice or balance. It's about being tough on crime, and sometimes that means you're putting the wrong person behind bars.

I find it deeply upsetting when I see justice not being served. How do we as human beings deal with the unknown? The West Memphis Three trial is a joke on so many different levels.

The breath Of accusation kills an innocent name, And leaves for lame acquittal the poor life, Which is a mask without it.

Two of the three men, who were imprisoned, Norman Butler and Robert 15x Johnson, convicted and given life sentences, I'm absolutely convinced were innocent. The real murderers of Malcolm X have not been caught or punished.

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.