Prosecutorial Misconduct Quotes

The innocent are frequently punished instead of the guilty

I'm still angry with Simpson for getting by with two murders.

We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.

In representing criminal defendants—especially guilty ones—it is often necessary to take the offensive against the government: to put the government on trial for its misconduct.

Charging a reporter with trespassing and interfering with a police officer when he was just doing his job is outrageous. This latest action represents contemptable overreaching by prosecutors who seem to have no regard for the role of journalists seeking to cover a major story and following normal practice.

I think one of the biggest scams in law enforcement is the monitor.

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

I believe that even if a criminal defendant has committed a heinous wrong, they should still be treated with respect from everyone in the criminal justice system, including prosecutors

People have been to jail when they're innocent. I knew I would never miss a single ball on a snooker table on purpose and, until then, I was sure the evidence would support me.

There have been high crimes and misdemeanors, but they have been committed by the special prosecutor and the Congress, not the president.

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.

When police or prosecutors conceal significant exculpatory or impeaching material, we hold, it is ordinarily incumbent on the state to set the record straight.

Each time I told them I didn't kill my wife.

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.

The business of popularizing crime is how we expose the faults in our justice system. It's how we expose police misconduct.

Prosecutorial misconduct is one of the most detrimental problems in our criminal justice system, because prosecutors are essentially the most powerful actors in our justice system because they set the charges, they basically set up the rules of the game.

Criminal conduct by police officers, federal agents, and their confederates cannot be tolerated and will be met with the full force of the law.

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.

Nobody wants to read about the honest lawyer down the street who does real estate loans and wills. If you want to sell books, you have to write about the interesting lawyers - the guys who steal all the money and take off. That's the fun stuff.

Using legally approved tricks and lies, the detective coerces a false confession. Hiding facts that support innocence, the prosecutor forces a dubious plea of guilt. The judge sentences for acquitted conduct, as she is allowed to do. The defense attorney for the poor, overworked because of underfunding by the state, fails to summon sufficient resources to investigate and rebut. The legal immigrant is deported with no meaningful access to constitutional rights. These intrusions are woven into the statutes and enabled by courts

I am here wrongfully convicted and wrongfully sentenced.

And that's the mission of The Innocence Project in New York, is to exonerate people who have been wrongfully convicted, and also work from a policy angle with Congress and state legislatures to prevent future wrongful convictions.

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

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

Judges as a class are not a speaking out group.