Nnamdi Asomugha Quotes
I think any time you're able to humanize the plight of the wrongfully incarcerated, then you're doing your job.
Asomugha, Nnamdi. Interview. Sundance Film Festival, Jan. 2017.
He was referring to exonerations for capital crimes like murder. He had written a book about a case where a man who was later proved innocent was reprieved only 5 days before his execution.
This interesting historical quotation illustrates the fact that in almost every American generation there are those who believe that society has gone too far in protecting the rights of criminal suspects at the expense of law and order in the general society. This is nothing new. This is a classic argument given by those who would deny a defendant the Constitutional protection against self-incrimination. The belief that an innocent man has nothing to fear from the police is refuted by the many cases of innocent men being convicted by evidence they have given in the belief that they were innocent, and served long jail sentences only to later be proved by DNA evidence that they could not possibly have been guilty. Since Nott’s day, society has not only found many cases where honest error was made by the police or prosecutors, but many where there was venal prosecutorial misconduct and defendants were jailed even though the authorities were aware of evidence of innocence and kept it secret. There have been a number of these cases where a defendant was on death row and about to be executed when it was found he was innocent. Probably there have been men wrongly executed. See {629444} for a probable example.
The Senator was referring to the large number of people who had been exonerated by DNA evidence while on Death Row.
Nnamdi Asomugha is an American actor, producer and former football cornerback. He played college football for the University of California, Berkeley, and was drafted in the first round of the 2003 NFL Draft by the Oakland Raiders. He also played for the Philadelphia Eagles and San Francisco 49ers. For many years he was considered one of the best shutdown corners in the NFL. In his 11-year career, he was voted All-Pro four times, including two times to the first team. Asomugha was selected as a member of Fox Sports's NFL All-Decade Team 2000-2009 and USA Today's NFL All-Decade Team 2000s, and is considered one of the greatest Oakland Raiders of all time.
