It is worse than a crime, it is a mistake.

Reaction to the 1804 drumhead trial and execution of Louis Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Enghien, on orders of Napoleon. Actually said by either Antoine Boulay de la Meurthe, legislative deputy from Meurthe — according to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations — or Joseph Fouché, Napoleon's chief of police — according to Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)