Joseph Estrada Quotes
I will prove my innocence, ... I guarantee the Filipino people that I will be vindicated because the truth is on my side.
Conde, Carlos H. "Estrada Testifies in Plunder Trial." The New York Times, The New York Times Company, 23 Mar. 2006.
Watkins was the first Dallas County Black DA. He was being interviewed because DNA testing proved that a man who had served 30 years in prison for rape and robbery, could not have committed the crime, and he had just been released. Watkins quotation was very significant because it set forth a philosophy that while extant in other areas of the country is almost unheard of in Texas, where there have been more innocent men convicted than in any other state. DAs in Texas usually fight every attempt to examine old evidence with modern tools.
This quotation has become an operational principle of most justice systems of industrial democracies.
The exonerated based on the investigative work of some volunteer attorneys and law students. None of the miscarriages of justice were found or discovered by any law enforcement personnel, prosecutors, judges or officials of Texas. All the exonerated were released from jail where many had served decades for crimes they did not commit. 5 were released from Death Row—awaiting to be executed. Perry’s logic was that there was no problem because the 56 were released. For him, innocent people serving decades in Jail and sometimes waiting to be executed, did not constitute a problem. Of course, he assumed that the 56 cases of exhortation were the only cases of wrongful convictions in Texas. See {635340}.
Texas executes more people than the rest of the United States does. However, just before the debate an investigation disclosed 56 recent cases in Texas where the “criminals” were completely exonerated based on the work of some volunteer attorneys and law students. They were all released from jail where many had served decades for crimes they did not commit. 5 were released from Death Row—awaiting to be executed. See {635339}.
This quotation is a great example of the difficulty of deciding some of the major Constitutional issues. Most reasonable people believe that Rehnquist certainly has a point. On the other hand, critics observe that this quotation essentially says that it is OK to convict an innocent person if it cost too much or be too much trouble to do so. Reasonable people would also agree that this objection has much merit also. So the judicial system is stuck with deciding when the cost or trouble is too much. There will never, can never, be a clear cut answer.
Joseph Ejercito Estrada, also known by the nickname Erap, is a Filipino politician and former actor who served as the 13th president of the Philippines from 1998 to 2001, 9th vice president of the Philippines from 1992 to 1998, and the 26th mayor of the City of Manila, the country's capital, from 2013 to 2019. In 2001, he became the first president in Asia to be impeached from an executive role and resigned from power.
