Political Quotes

“Mr. President, as one who had the privilege of being a prosecutor, I have great faith in our criminal justice system and the men and women who have dedicated their lives to making it work. Sometimes mistakes are made, and those mistakes have catastrophic consequences. They can mean an innocent person spends his or her life in prison, or worse, is executed. They mean a guilty person remains free--able to victimize again. When mistakes are made, lives are destroyed. We would like to think these kinds of mistakes are few and far between, but they happen all the time. Just this month we saw that two innocent men in North Carolina were exonerated. They had served 30 years behind bars for a crime they did not commit. One of those men had been sentenced to death. Can you imagine being in a prison and having those steel doors close every day all the while knowing you are there--perhaps never to leave until you die--for a crime you never committed? But even worse, you know that the person who committed the crime is out free. Can you imagine that? I know some of these people. I have talked with them. I know it and can just begin to understand what gnaws at them when they are behind bars for a crime they didn't commit, knowing that the person who committed the crime is out free to do it again. Henry Lee McCollum and his half brother Leon Brown were teenagers. They were arrested in 1983 for a heinous crime--the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl.…”