Jose Rizal Quotes
Tomorrow at 7, I shall be shot; but I am innocent of the crime of rebellion. I am going to die with a tranquil conscience.
Rizal, José. Letter to Ferdinand Blumentritt. 29 Dec. 1896. The Rizal-Blumentritt Correspondence, vol. 2, National Historical Institute, 1992, p. 572.
Mistakes in the criminal justice system have been with us from the birth of the nation.
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 is one of the sharpest dissents in Supreme Court history. Rarely to justices write opinions accusing other justices of a gross immorality or crime. The majority held that the Supreme Court should not grant a new trial simply because there was some evidence discovered showing him innocent. See {635412} for a quotation from the majority opinion.
“Patriot” meant someone who was a supporter of anti-monarchy dissidents and rebels. It was more than a good citizen. The prisoners were incarcerated because they had been accused of supporting the monarchy early in or after the French Revolution.
José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda was a Filipino nationalist and polymath during the tail end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. He is tagged as the national hero (pambansang bayani) of the Philippines. An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal became a writer and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement, which advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain.
