Exonerated Texas death row inmate Anthony Graves files grievance against prosecutor

Anthony Graves

Former Texas death row inmate Anthony Graves filed a state bar grievance Monday asking that former Burleson County District Attorney Charles Sebesta be held accountable by the State Bar of Texas for Graves' wrongful murder conviction.

Lawmakers who flanked Graves as he made the announcement at Texas Southern University touted a new state law that allows a grievance against a prosecutor to be filed within four years of a wrongfully imprisoned person's release.

"I am asking prosecutors who operate with the highest integrity to support me," Graves told reporters. "I am seeking justice for the man who wrongfully prosecuted me."

Graves, who was convicted in the 1992 murder of 45-year-old Bobbie Davis, her 16-year-old daughter and her four grandchildren, was released on Oct. 27, 2010, more than 18 years after his conviction.

Sebesta maintains that Graves is guilty of capital murder.

Graves was released from prison after his case was returned to Burleson County on appeal to be retried. The district attorney who succeeded Sebesta declined to prosecute Graves again, freeing him.

Graves's complaint to the state bar follows on the heels of last year's plea agreement for former Texas prosecutor Ken Anderson, who was sentenced to a 10-day jail sentence for the wrongful murder conviction of Michael Morton. Morton's case was the impetus for the new law, said state senator John Whitmire.

Anderson was also disbarred and ordered to perform 500 hours of community service. Morton was released from prison in 2011 after DNA evidence showed he didn't beat his wife to death in 1986.

Source: Houston Chronicle, January 20, 2014

Former death row inmate Anthony Graves taking action against man who prosecuted him, alleging misconduct 

HOUSTON — Former death row inmate Anthony Graves, who who spent 18 years behind bars before being exonerated, announced Monday that he is taking action against the man who prosecuted him, alleging prosecutorial misconduct.

“We’re here today, Martin Luther King Day, seeking justice for me and my family and the citizens of this state,” Graves said to a crowd at Texas Southern University while announcing that he would file a grievance against former Burleson County District Attorney Charles Sebesta.

Graves spent 12 of his 18 years in prison on death row — where he twice neared execution. Graves had been convicted of killing a Somerville family of six, even though another man, Robert Carter, confessed that he was the sole killer. Both men were sentenced to death. Then, in 2006, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Graves' conviction, ruling that Sebesta had used false testimony and withheld Carter's confession from the defense.

“I’m asking prosecutors to cooperate with the highest of integrity,” Graves said. "It took me 18-and-a-half years to get back home. Two execution dates. All because a man abused his position."

Robert Bennett, Graves’ attorney, said Graves could elect to pursue criminal charges against Sebesta in addition to filing a grievance with the State Bar of Texas. Sebesta could not immediately be reached for comment, but he has denied that he withheld evidence in the case. On his website, Sebesta defends his actions and points to the State Bar's dismissal of a previous grievance over the case.

State Sens. John Whitmire and Rodney Ellis and Rep. Senfronia Thompson, all Houston Democrats, joined Graves at Monday's news conference. Supporting Graves' pursuit of a grievance, they called on the State Bar to provide justice for Graves.

“It doesn’t hurt to have some transparency,” Thompson said. “No one is above the law.”

In 2013, Whitmire authored Senate Bill 825, which changed the statute of limitations for a wrongfully imprisoned person to file a grievance in cases of alleged prosecutorial misconduct. The new law allows Graves to take action against Sebesta up to four years after the date of Graves’ release from prison. Previously, the four-year statute began on the date the misconduct was discovered.

Whitmire said that while district attorneys will always be needed, “the message today is, we’re watching them.”

Graves was released Oct. 27, 2010, which meant that under SB 825 he is eligible to file a grievance through Oct. 27 of this year. At the conclusion of Monday's news conference, using an aide’s iPad, he submitted his grievance electronically.

“It’s a great day to be alive,” he said.

Source: The Texas Tribune, January 20, 2014

Anthony Graves, Former Death Row Inmate, Creates Scholarship In Name Of Attorney Who Saved His Life

Anthony Graves

For eight years, Nicole Casarez worked tirelessly to seek justice for death row inmate Anthony Graves.

The Houston-based attorney and journalism professor knew that Graves had been wrongly imprisoned for murder, and she was determined to see him freed.

Finally, in 2010, after spending 18 years in prison -- 12 on them on death row -- Graves was exonerated, largely thanks to the efforts of Casarez and her students at Houston's University of St. Thomas. Several months later, he was awarded $1.4 million by the Texas Legislature for wrongful incarceration, according to ABC News.

Graves told Texas Monthly's Pamela Colloff that he's been wanting to express his immense gratitude to Casarez -- his "angel" and "sister" -- but hasn't quite known how to go about it.

“I wanted to repay Nicole but I knew she’d never accept money from me,” Graves said. “I thought about giving her an amazing trip somewhere, but I wanted to give her something that would live on.”

Finally, after consulting with Casarez's husband, Graves came up with a plan: He would establish a college scholarship in Casarez's name.

Click here to read the full article

Source: The Huffington Post, October 18, 2013

The innocent men haunted by years on death row

He spent 16 years on death row in a US jail, narrowly escaping two dates set for execution. Now Anthony Graves is one of about 140 people who walked free after being cleared of any crime.

His case is a beacon for activists seeking to ban capital punishment, which was reinstated in the United States in 1976.

Since then more than 1,300 people have been executed, but 142 have been exonerated by the courts. Graves was number 138.

"How do you compensate a man you took so much from and that you can never replace," says Graves.

He was wrongly accused of murder and spent more than two years in prison as his case was tried, before then languishing for another 16 on death row.

"They took 18 years of my life, that they can never give me back. They still owe me my opportunity to raise my children, they stole my opportunity to make free choices," he said.

Since he walked out of the prison gates in October 2010, this father of three boys says he has learned to appreciate the small things in life. "What a blessing to open your eyes every morning, see the sun rise," he tells AFP.

He had been sentenced to die in 1994, accused of multiple murders.

He was convicted after being named as an accomplice by another suspect and because the prosecution maintained the crimes could not have been carried out by one person acting alone.

Six years later in 2000, the killer Robert Carter confessed just weeks before his own execution to having lied that Graves was his accomplice.

But despite the 11th-hour confession, Graves remained behind bars for another 10 years in the notorious jail in Livingston, Texas -- the state which on Wednesday is set to carry out its 500th execution since 1976.

"The worst place you could imagine, like a hell-to-be, 24/7, 18-and-a-half years, every day, you can feel chaos, sadness and grief, that's death row."

Three hundred people went to their deaths during his enforced sojourn.

"Texas executes a lot. I was there for 300 executions. I knew most of the guys. We became like family," he says.

Forensic science paved way for reforms

"After months of investigation and talking to every witness who's ever been involved in this case, and people who've never been talked to before, after looking under every rock we could find, we found not one piece of credible evidence that links Anthony Graves to the commission of this capital murder," said special prosecutor Kelly Siegler.

Sixteen years after the trial, Siegler has finally concluded that Graves "is an innocent man."

Another 141 men, 71 of them African Americans, have been cleared of any crime in 26 US states, according to the non-profit organization the Death Penalty Information Center.

"If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed," said former Supreme Court judge Sandra Day O'Connor.

In fact, at least 10 people, including six in Texas, have been executed despite major doubts about their guilt, according to the center.

"There is no way to tell how many of the over 1,000 people executed since 1976 may also have been innocent," it says.

"Courts do not generally entertain claims of innocence when the defendant is dead. Defense attorneys move on to other cases where clients' lives can still be saved."

The center points to some possible examples -- Carlos DeLuna, executed in 1989 despite a mountain of evidence that he was not the killer and the repeated confessions of another man; Cameron Willingham, put to death in 2004 for killing his three children in a fire even after an inquiry carried out after his execution ruled that the blaze was not a result of arson; Troy Davis, executed in 2011 even though seven out of nine witnesses recanted their statements.

The fear of executing innocent men and women has always been at the core of the passionate arguments by those against capital punishment.

"The steady evolution of this issue since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 has been accelerated in recent years by the development of DNA technology, the new gold standard of forensic investigation," said the center's director Richard Dieter.

"This science, along with a vigorous re-investigation of many cases, has led to the discovery of a growing number of tragic mistakes and freed inmates."

This helped prompt many reforms, says Steve Hall from the Texas advocacy group StandDown. He points to such things as the opening of an office of convictions integrity, and post-conviction access to DNA testing.

"We've seen too many examples where the system got it wrong. With the death penalty, once you execute, you can't correct," he said.

Source: AFP, June 23, 2013

America's 10 Worst Prisons: Polunsky

Typical Polunsky Death Row Cell

"The most lethal [death row] anywhere in the democratic world" is also probably "the hardest place to do time in Texas," writes Robert Perkinson, author of the book TexasTough. Indeed, the all-solitary Allan B. Polunsky Unit houses condemned Texans under some of the nation's harshest death row conditions. The prisoners are housed in single cells on 22-hour-a-day lockdown, and even during their daily "recreation" hour, they are confined in separate cages. With no access to phones, televisions, contact visits, they remain in essentially a concrete tomb (PDF) until execution day—a stretch of at least three years for the mandatory appeals, and far longer if they opt to keep fighting. Some have been known to commit suicide or waive their appeals rather than continue living under such conditions.

The backlash: At Polunsky, the "emotional torture" of awaiting death in total isolation is "driving men out of their minds," former prisoner Anthony Graves told senators last year at the first-ever Judiciary Committee hearing on solitary confinement. "I would watch guys come to prison totally sane and in three years they don't live in the real world anymore," recalled Graves, who was exonerated in 2010, after spending more than 18 years on death row.

Graves detailed for the senators some of the profoundly erratic behavior of his fellow prisoners. "I know a guy who would sit in the middle of the floor, rip his sheet up, wrap it around himself, and light it on fire. Another guy…would take his feces and smear it all over his face as though he was in military combat."

Click here to read the full article

Source: Mother Jones, May 2, 2013

Texas' death row is a disgrace to the State of Texas. Click here to view 50 recent annotated pictures of the 'living' conditions on Texas' death row. These photos were provided by the State of Texas in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by attorney Yolanda Torres. These photos were then posted on Thomas Whitaker's blog, "Minutes Before Six". Thomas Whitaker is currently on death row in the State of Texas.

Texas: Bill Would Restrict Informant Testimony in Death Cases

Anthony Graves was wrongly convicted and sent to death row in 1994 based largely on the testimony of an alleged accomplice in the fiery murders of six people. The accomplice, while on the execution gurney, admitted he was the lone killer. Ten years later, in 2010, Graves was exonerated.

Like Graves, Muneer Deeb, Michael Toney and Robert Springsteen were sentenced to death after trials that involved the testimony of their cellmates or alleged accomplices. Their convictions were all overturned.

State Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, has filed a bill, HB 189, that aims to prevent wrongful death sentences in cases that involve unreliable testimony from alleged accomplices or jailhouse snitches who receive a reward for implicating someone else.

“What we have found is that there have been people who, for their own self-interest, have basically fabricated testimony about other folks, and as a consequence that person has been found guilty,” Dutton said.  

Criminal justice reform advocates said the measure is a critical next step in Texas’ efforts to prevent wrongful convictions. Critics of the measure, though, argue that current rules already protect defendants against unreliable testimony and that eliminating such accomplice or informant testimony could tie prosecutors’ hands.

Click here to read the full article

Source: Texas Tribune, November 28, 2012

The Living Dead: HuffPost Live Talks To Exonerated Death Row Inmate Anthony Graves

Twenty years ago, a Texas judge sentenced Anthony Graves to death for six murders he did not commit. He spent eighteen years in prison, twelve of them on death row. For most of that time, he was in solitary confinement -- locked in an eight by twelve cell, reinforced by a steel door.

Throughout his incarceration, Graves maintained his innocence and was finally exonerated in 2010. Now an activist working to create awareness around prisoner isolation, he testified before a congressional subcommittee, describing the emotional torture he endured and the mental anguish of his prison mates.

Click here to read the full article

Source: Huff Post, Sept. 19, 2012

The Living Death of Solitary Confinement

There are many ways to destroy a person, but the simplest and most devastating might be solitary confinement. Deprived of meaningful human contact, otherwise healthy prisoners often come unhinged. They experience intense anxiety, paranoia, depression, memory loss, hallucinations and other perceptual distortions. Psychiatrists call this cluster of symptoms SHU syndrome, named after the Security Housing Units of many supermax prisons. Prisoners have more direct ways of naming their experience. They call it “living death,” the “gray box,” or “living in a black hole.”

In June the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights, headed by Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, held the first Congressional hearing on solitary confinement. Advocates and experts in the field were invited to submit testimony on the psychological, ethical, social and economic issues raised by punitive isolation. Among the many contributors was Anthony Graves, who spent over 18 years on death row in Texas, most of them in solitary confinement, for a crime he did not commit. Graves describes his isolation as a form of “emotional torture.” Two years after his exoneration and release, he still feels trapped in isolation: “I am living amongst millions of people in the world today, but most of the time I feel alone. I cry at night because of this feeling. I just want to stop feeling this way, but I haven’t been able to.”

We tend to assume that solitary confinement is reserved for “the worst of the worst”: violent inmates who have proved themselves unwilling or unable to live in the general population. But the truth is that an inmate can be sent to the hole for failing to return a meal tray, or for possession of contraband (which can include anything from weapons to spicy tortilla chips). According to the Bureau of Justice, there were 81,622 prisoners in some form of “restricted housing” (code for solitary confinement) in 2005.

Click here to read the full article

Source: Lisa Guenther, The Opinion Pages, The New York Times, August 26, 2012. Lisa Guenther is an associate professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University and the author of the forthcoming book “Social Death and Its Afterlives: A Critical Phenomenology of Solitary Confinement.”

Insiders speak out on the death penalty

Holding cells at 'The Walls' Unit
Huntsville, TX.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment was legal in 1976, the state of Texas has executed 978 people.

For many Americans, the death penalty is seen as a part of a complex judicial system that ultimately protects the majority from a dangerous minority.

Except in cases of extreme controversy like that of Troy Davis in September, the death penalty is an issue that often goes ignored by the American public.

"If you think this is not your issue, I would urge you to get out of your naiveté," Rick Halperin, director of the SMU Embrey Human Rights program, said to a packed McCord Auditorium.

In the upcoming presidential election, candidates on both sides of the aisle are for the death penalty.

"You should really be aware of the implications of your voting. You are voting for people who have said they would kill someone," Halperin said.

A panel discussion on the death penalty in Texas on Thursday night portrayed an often-untold perspective of capital punishment.

Exonerees Anthony Graves and Clarence Brandley along with the Rev. Carroll Pickett, a former death row chaplain, presented their arguments against a punishment often described as inhumane.

"Most of you weren't even born when I went through this hell 23 years ago," Brandley said.

Brandley was wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of a 16-year-old student. He spent nine years on death row.

His first trial ended in a hung jury. But just a few weeks later, he was sentenced to death.

Brandley was desperate for media and legal attention when an overzealous prosecution convicted him.

"I passed my polygraph test and no one cared," Brandley said. "But if I had failed, all the news media would have been all over it."

He urged the crowd to carefully examine the merits of the justice system in America before deciding on the capital punishment issue.

"Don't let anyone tell you that your vote doesn't count," Brandley said. "I don't understand how someone can sign a death warrant and go to bed that night. I don't know what kind of God he serves."

Brandley's impassionate speech for political activism was followed by the Rev. Pickett's discussion on the evolution of his views on the death penalty.

"I was in favor of the death penalty because my grandfather was murdered when my father was just 12," Pickett said. "I assumed that no one was just found to be guilty without cause."

Pickett was known as the death chaplain at the Huntsville prison because he was the last religious figure that saw death row inmates before their executions.

The former chaplain now regrets his former stance on the death penalty issue.

"I buried 4,000 inmates who died in prison and watched over 95 executions," Pickett said. "The longer I was at the prison and talked to people, I realized that the death penalty was wrong."

Pickett listed multiple reasons for why the death penalty was not a practical punishment.

He listed the high public costs of the death penalty, cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners and the ineffectiveness of the death penalty as a crime deterrent as reasons to look at other punishment alternatives.

However, Pickett saved his best reasons for last.

"We have executed innocent people because of faulty eyewitness testimony," Pickett said. "And even worse, before someone dies, they strip search him and leave him naked in a 9-by-9 room waiting to die."

Click here to read the full article

Source: The Daily Campus, Feb. 3, 2012

Perry the Executioner

Texas leads the country in executions, and Rick Perry holds the record tally.

Should Perry wish to commute a death sentence, under state law he must wait for the BPP [Board of Pardons and Paroles] to recommend he do so before he can act accordingly. In that sense, says Jordan Steiker, a professor at the University of Texas' School of Law and co-director of its Capital Punishment Clinic, a Texas governor's hand is not as strong in death cases as some might suppose. "The sort of large picture ... is that the governor isn't all that powerful," he says. Yet the governor is responsible for appointing the members of the BPP (because Perry has been governor for three terms, all of the current appointees were named by him) and so is effectively able to stack it as he wishes. If Perry were at all skeptical of capital punishment, one would expect that skepticism to be reflected in his choices for the board.

As it stands, the current members are a not a bleeding-heart bunch. That is one reason that the Foster case stands out: "The Foster case was unusual; it was an actual vision of the death penalty as being disproportionate," says Steiker. "But [Perry] hasn't been consistent with that principle since Foster." Indeed, although "his powers are significantly limited in terms of clemency procedures," notes Kristin Houlé, executive director of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Perry has demonstrated clearly that he runs the show, rejecting the two other cases where the board recommended clemency – including one similar to Foster's. In 2009, the BPP recommended that Perry commute the sentence of Robert Thompson, also convicted and sentenced to die under the state's law of parties. Thomp­son had participated in a robbery that left a store clerk dead, but he had not fired the fatal shot. His accomplice, Sammy Butler, was responsible for Mansoor Mohammed's death; at trial, Butler was given a life sentence. In rejecting the BPP's recommendation, Perry noted that Thompson had a "murderous past."

(It's necessary to point out that the state of Texas only employs a "clemency" process at all because the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that one is required for any state that allows the death penalty. In fact, the Texas system is designed so that actual clemency – an extrajudicial judgement of mitigating circumstances requiring mercy – has as little effect as possible. State officials, including the governor and his appointed members of the BPP, routinely cite the existence of "due process" – trial, conviction, and appeals – for their confirmation of death sentences, and potential reasons for clemency are rarely addressed at all.)

Since 2001, the BPP has made three recommendations that a death sentence be commuted to life. In two of those cases, Perry rejected the recommendation and allowed the offender to be executed. In fact, Perry stands in the annals of history as the governor who has presided over the most executions during the modern era of the death penalty.

Click here to read the full article

Source : The Austin Chronicle, Jordan Smith, September 15, 2011

Rick Perry's Death Penalty Stance May Be A Tough Sell Nationally

In tough-on-crime Texas, supporting the death penalty is practically a political prerequisite, and Gov. Rick Perry has nailed that qualification, overseeing the executions of 230 prisoners, more than any other modern governor of any state.

“He certainly would stand out among other governors,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center. “But that’s just sort of a given in Texas.”

As Perry considers a bid for the White House, experts say his willingness to implement the death penalty and his adamant denial of the possibility Texas may have executed an innocent man could have mixed campaign consequences.

During his 10-year tenure, Perry has overseen nearly half of the 470 executions in Texas since the death penalty was reinstated in 1974. In that time, public opinion about the death penalty has evolved as DNA evidence and other modern forensic science developments have cleared many wrongfully convicted inmates across the country. More than 130 death row inmates nationwide have been exonerated since 1973 — including 12 in Texas — according to the Death Penalty Information Center. A 2010 Gallup News poll found that public approval of the death penalty had dropped from an all-time high of 80 % in 1994 to 65 percent in 2009.

A number of states, including Illinois, New Mexico, New York and New Jersey, have in recent years stopped using the death penalty.

Despite the uncovering of wrongful convictions in Texas and other states, though, Perry has granted few requests for clemency in death penalty cases. “Clemencies are rare everywhere, but they’re particularly rare in Texas,” Dieter said.

Perry can only grant clemency to an inmate if the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends it. The board reviews hundreds of requests each year from former prisoners and from inmates who want their sentences reduced or their criminal records cleared. From 2001 to 2009, the board considered more than 2,000 applications. It recommended clemency in more than 530 cases related to all kinds of crimes, and Perry granted about 30 % of them.

Perry has commuted the death sentences of 31 inmates. The great majority of those commutations — 28 — involved cases in which the defendant was a juvenile at the time of the crime. Perry begrudgingly commuted those sentences in 2005, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states could not execute those who were younger than 18 at the time of their crime. “While these individuals were convicted by juries of brutal murders and sentenced to die for their heinous crimes, I have no choice but to commute these sentences to life in prison,” Perry said at the time.

In 2 other cases, Perry commuted to life in prison the death sentences of inmates who were proven mentally retarded, another group of individuals the nation’s highest court has excluded from the death penalty.

And in the only other case, Perry commuted the death sentence of Kenneth Foster to life in prison after his attorneys argued he was not the shooter in the May 1996 murder for which he was convicted but only drove the getaway car. Foster was sentenced under Texas’ “law of parties,” which allows capital punishment for individuals who may not have been the killer but who were parties to the crime. Perry said, as he granted the commutation just hours before Foster was to be executed in August 2007, that he hoped lawmakers would re-examine the law of parties. Despite efforts to repeal the law in the two legislative sessions since then, it remains on the books.

Todd Willingham
and daughter

2 of Texas' highest-profile death penalty recent cases continue to shadow Perry. The case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 for an arson that killed his three daughters, has roiled the criminal justice community in Texas and nationwide. Since Willingham's execution, public reports have revealed that Perry’s office was aware that serious scientific questions had been raised about evidence used to convict Willingham. Perry has dismissed the reports of scientists who concluded Willingham was not responsible for the blaze and has called him a guilty “monster.” The Texas Forensic Science Commission continues to investigate the science used in the Willingham case, and the Innocence Project continues its fight to prove that Texas killed an innocent man.

Anthony Graves is the most recent Texan to be freed from death row after proving his innocence. He spent 14 years on death row and four years in isolation at the Burleson County Jail before prosecutors dropped the charges against him. He had initially been convicted based on the testimony of the actual killer, Robert Carter, despite the lack of any physical evidence tying Graves to the brutal murders or any clear motive for the crime. Twice, Graves was nearly executed.

Still, Perry, during a campaign stop days after Graves’ release in October, said the case showed that the state’s criminal justice system is working. “I think we have a justice system that is working, and he’s a good example of — you continue to find errors that were made and clear them up,” Perry said, according to a report in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal. “That’s the good news for us, is that we are a place that continues to allow that to occur. So I think our system works well; it goes through many layers of observation and appeal, et cetera.”

Anthony Graves

This week, the Texas comptroller paid Graves $1.45 million for the time he spent behind bars after Perry signed a bill that enabled him to be compensated. But Graves’ lawyers said much work remains to ensure that Texas doesn’t make the same mistake again.

Perry’s gubernatorial challengers — both his GOP rival U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Democratic former Houston Mayor Bill White — last year tried to make hay of his handling of the death penalty. Neither candidate made much headway, and the topic was hardly a matter of debate during the campaign.

But how the controversies over wrongful convictions and the death penalty play out on a national scale could be different, experts said.

In the GOP presidential primary campaigns, Perry’s tough-on-crime credentials likely only stand to help him among conservative voters. “There’s not a lot of concern among his target audience with these kinds of questions,” said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas. In the primaries, other candidates would have to work hard to make the death penalty an issue damaging to Perry, he said, and as the governor has shown in his home state, there’s a slim chance such an attack would meet with success.

Rick Perry

But if he becomes the party’s presidential nominee, Perry’s stance on the death penalty could present a bigger challenge, said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. In Democratic-leaning states, Sabato said, Perry’s commitment to capital punishment is likely to hurt him. But, he added, it’s not as though Perry would carry those states anyway.

The bigger question, Sabato said, is how the issue affects swing states where many voters are not strictly aligned with either party. For many independent voters, Perry could be seen as an even more conservative version of President George W. Bush, an impression only deepened by his ardent support of the death penalty.

“To the average American, he’s going to be another Texan, but an even tougher, harder-edge Texan,” Sabato said. “For swing states, that’s going to be a tough sell.”

Source: Business Insider, August 15, 2011

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Anthony Graves continues campaign for justice

A Texas man exonerated from death row last year shared a message of hope and advocacy with the Third Ward community Sunday.

"The very system that almost took my life for something I did not do still exists. Yet I am still hopeful," Anthony Graves, 45, told a crowd at the S.H.A.P.E. Community Center.

Graves spread the same message during a recent speaking tour in Germany, France, Sweden and Switzerland.

"I went to educate people about the death penalty and the flaws of our system," said Graves, who spent 18 years behind bars, 12 of them on death row, for the murders of a grandmother and five children in Somerville.

Click here to read the full article

Source: Houston Chronicle, June 27, 2011

Anthony Graves Wants His Name Cleared

Anthony Graves

It was a day of celebration for Anthony Graves. After 18 years of wrongful imprisonment and two execution dates, he will finally be compensated for the Texas injustice.

Govenor Rick Perry signed legislation in early June that will allow Anthony Graves to receive $1.4 million in state compensation for a wrongful capital murder conviction that left him behind bars for 18 years.

Graves says it has been a tortuous journey home from the hell that is Texas death row and in order for his fight to be over, he needs one more thing from the State of Texas.

Houston abolitionists, local activists, and members of the peace and justice movement welcomed Graves to the Shape Community Center on Sunday afternoon.

While Graves says the $1.4 million will help him build a new life, it can't replace his loss of freedom.

"I'm happy about the money, but let's not forget, it's not the lottery that I won; I lost 18 years of my life and if I had a choice between the money and the 18 years, I would take the 18 years," said Graves.

After 18 years of fighting, Graves says there is one more thing he wants -- his name cleared.

"What I wish now is for the State of Texas to give me some type of decree that says I'm actually innocent, then that's when the fight is over for me, this particular fight," said Graves. "I filed a lawsuit against the Attorney General's office asking them to do just that and it seems like it's going to be a fight just to get that done."

Since Graves walked free from prison in October 2010, he has been a busy man. He works as an investigator for the Texas Defender service in Austin and he recently traveled to Europe for a speaking tour. But he says it has been hard fitting into today's society.

"Everything, your sense of direction, you've been gone for 18 years and then it's like, they take you and just throw you on a new planet and say, 'Survive the best way you can,' so you come out of there you see technologies has changed, everything around you has changed, what you may have taken advantage of every day, is still kind of scary to me," said Graves.

As for his future, he is doing what he wants to be doing, fighting against the very institution that almost took his life away, the death penalty.

"Everybody's focused on the money, but what about the fact that I almost lost my life, what about the 18 years that was stolen from me, what are we going to do about that? How are we going to make sure that if doesn't happen to your neighbor, friend or dad, this is not a feel-good moment, it's bittersweet for me, because I gave up so much, just to get a little," said Graves. "I almost lost my life. Where's the outrage?"

"This chose me, I didn’t choose it. It chose me, and now it's given me some sense of purpose and direction in how I want to live my life and where I want to take it," said Graves. He will not receive the $1.4 million dollars all at once.

Graves will get $80,000 every year for the next 18 years. He said he will spend some money on his mother, but he's going to be very frugal and wise with the rest.

Source: myfoxhouston, June 27, 2011
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Anthony Graves: The Texas Tribune Interview

Anthony Graves

The state of Texas incarcerated him for nearly 2 decades — and nearly executed him twice — for murders he didn't commit. And now, the state is balking at giving him the $1.4 million he's owed for all the years he spent wrongfully imprisoned.

Despite it all, Anthony Graves is remarkably positive. He's just happy to be off death row, and elated to be working to bring hope to his friends who are still there. Last week, Graves sat down with the Tribune at his downtown Austin office at the Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit organization that works with death row inmates.

Graves was convicted in 1994 of killing five family members in Somerville before lighting the house ablaze. The other young man convicted in the slayings, Robert Carter (who was executed in 2000), eventually admitted he was the lone killer, but it took another decade before the Burleson County district attorney dropped the charges against Graves and released him from custody. He has been free since October.

Getting used to a world that has changed dramatically since he was a part of it has been surreal and at times scary, Graves said. But he said he's just happy to have the opportunity now to make choices in his life and help others who are in the same situation he faced.

The Tribune interview came a day after Graves' first return visit to death row. This time, he talked with his friends — who are also now his clients — on the free side of the plexiglass, wearing a suit and investigating their cases. For him, it was the fruition of 18 years of death row dreams.

The exonerated 45-year-old talked about life on death row, about the scariness of the free world and the work he said is now his life's mission: abolishing the death penalty.

TT: How is life after death row?

Graves: It’s been great. I see life a little differently, you know. I know that out here I hear a lot of people complaining about a lot of things, and every time I hear them complaining I think about these guys that are out there on death row. And I say to myself, you know, if you could just wake up one day in these guys’ shoes, you’d realize you don’t have anything to complain about, because whatever it is you are out here complaining about you have a choice. You can change it.

TT: What kind of work are you doing now?

Graves: The job is as a mitigation specialist working on death row cases. … We provide legal assistance to their attorneys, or we’ll take the case ourselves, it depends. What I’m doing is the investigative work on cases. I’m doing the mitigation part, where I go and try to find things in their background that could help get them relief, see if there’s any mental illness or any abuse or anything in their background that we could bring forward to the court. I dedicated my life to helping people who have been wrongfully convicted, and I dedicated my life to educating people about this death penalty. I really think that it’s a threat to our society. And the longer we have it around, the bigger the threat becomes. So what I’m doing now is traveling abroad sharing my story.

TT: How was your visit to death row as a free man?

Graves: People thought that I would have a hard time with it because I was down there for so long. But what people didn’t realize and didn’t know is that … the whole time I was down there I always said when I get out this is what I want to do. I’m going to come back down here and I’m going to be in my suit, and I’m going to let these guys see me and work on somebody’s case. All that came to fruition yesterday, and it was just totally incredible.

TT: Do you believe there are many more innocent death row inmates?

Graves: DNA is showing us that. It would be naïve for us to think just because there’s no DNA in a case those people are all guilty. DNA is showing us that we have a problem with our criminal justice system. And I definitely, definitely, definitely believe that there are many people on death row that are actually innocent. But there are many more that just have really, really bad cases. They shouldn’t have been charged with capital murder, maybe a lesser included offense. But because they didn’t have any really good legal attorneys they ended up getting the death penalty.

Typical death-row cell at Polunsky Unit, Texas
More here

TT: What’s a day on death row like?

Graves: It’s hell. It’s hell when you wake up, it’s hell when you have to live throughout the day, and it’s hell when you lay down at night. It’s just total chaos. You wake up at 3 in the morning. You get a breakfast, and they come back around about 5:30 asking are you going to go to recreation. If you decide that you’re going to go, you get up at 6. They dehumanize you by strip searching you and giving you a body cavity search and everything, and then they handcuff you and take you out on the rec yard before the sun even comes up. Then after that they bring you back to your cell and then they give you a few minutes to get ready, and they come back and ask you if you want a shower. And of course you’re going to shower. And they do the same thing, dehumanize you and send you through the whole body cavity search thing and handcuff you and escort you to the shower. After that, you’re fed again around 9:00 a.m., which is lunch. Other than if you have a legal visit or a regular visit or doctor’s appointment that you have to go to, you’re just in your cell for the rest of the day. And that’s a day on death row.

TT: How did you keep your hope alive?

Graves: I did a lot of writing, and I did a lot of reading, and I bought a radio so that I could listen to sports. I’m a big sports fan, especially Astros, Cowboys, Rockets. So I used to listen to sports a lot on the radio. It would just kind of take you out of that place. I wanted to make sure that every day I got up and did something that was going to help me save my life, whether it was to write one letter or ten letters I had to do something that was going to help me save my life. After that, then I could deal with rest of the day.

TT: What was the first thing you did when you were released?

Graves: Everybody was asking where was my mom and did my mom know… They wanted me to call my mom. They handed me a cell phone, and I was like man I don’t know how to use no cell phone. … So, when I got out I talked to my mom on my attorney’s cell phone. That was the first thing I did. I called my mom and asked her what was she cooking, and told her I was on my way home. It was like an out-of-body experience. It was so surreal. I couldn’t even connect with my own emotions for a while. It just all of the sudden started slowly hitting me as I was walking out of the gates: Man this fight is finally over. It’s finally over. And then, the sunshine just hit my face. Freedom.

TT: What are the challenges of finding your way in a much-changed world?

Graves: Even when I was doing the 18 years, I did them all one day at a time. Whatever challenges that I had to take on, I took them on. And it’s the same thing out here. I just do things one day at a time, one step at a time. I pay attention and try to learn as much as I can about technology, new roads, whatever. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s really been scary, and it’s really been weird, because you would think a man at the age of 45 would have this down. But it’s like learning how to walk all over again. It’s exciting, but when you stand up and you try to take that first step, it’s scary. And I’m taking steps now, so I’m kind of getting in my rhythm, I’m starting to get my walk down.

TT: Where do things stand with your compensation from the state?

Graves: As far as I know, they amended a piece of legislation that would allow me to receive the compensation, but that bill is still sitting on Gov. Rick Perry’s desk. It’s been up there since May 25. He hasn’t signed it or anything, so I don’t know. I’m cautiously optimistic, but we’ll just have to wait and see.

TT: What are your long-term goals?

Graves: I see myself doing this here until the death penalty is abolished. That’s it. I want to see the death penalty abolished, because I know first-hand how barbaric it is. I had two execution dates. The state was going to murder me for something I didn’t do. I would be naïve to think that I was the only one down there like that. If we’re killing someone who’s innocent then the death penalty is not working.

Source: Texas Tribune, June 17, 2011

June 19, 2011 Update
Governor Perry signed the bill yesterday dealing with wrongful conviction compensation - the bill that, among other things, should facilitate Anthony Graves finally receiving compensation, although he still hasn't yet received compensation and assumedly has to reapply. This bill is supposed to make it possible for him to receive compensation even though he was turned down before.
Relating to claims for compensation for wrongful imprisonment and group health benefits coverage for persons wrongfully imprisoned - Texas Legislature Online

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Exonerated DR inmate Anthony Graves likely to get money, but he still wants justice

Anthony Graves

GALVESTON — A bill that would compensate Anthony Graves for the 18 years he spent behind bars for murders he didn't commit is awaiting Gov. Rick Perry's signature, but Graves' attorneys say his fight for justice isn't over.

The House and Senate last week passed a bill with an amendment authored by Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, that allows Graves to collect the $80,000 per year allowed by law for each year of wrongful imprisonment. That would add up to $1.4 million for Graves.

Texas Comptroller Susan Combs in February denied him the compensation because the document ordering his release did not contain the words "actual innocence."

Graves said Tuesday that he won't count on getting compensation until Perry signs the legislation.

"I'm glad that they put together a piece of legislation that will allow them to compensate me for the wrongdoing," Graves said. "But as of right now nothing has been done. I'm optimistic it will be done. We'll just have to wait and see."

In the meantime, a lawsuit seeking to have the state attorney general declare Graves innocent will proceed, Graves' attorney Jeff Blackburn said. "Until he gets that, we are going to keep on pressing and sue whomever we need to sue," Blackburn said.

Click here to read the full article

Source: Houston Chronicle, May 25, 2011

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Clarence Brandley: Ex-Death Row Inmate Still Fighting for Restitution

Clarence Brandley, who spent nearly 10 years on death row for a murder he did not commit, will be back in the news today.

He and supporters are holding a press conference this afternoon to push for restitution from the state for being wrongly imprisoned. Like Anthony Graves, another Texan who spent time in prison for a murder he did not commit, Brandley is being denied compensation because the court order freeing him does not include language declaring him innocent.

"This is a righteous cause to bring justice and have it work the way it is supposed to work," said his brother, Ozell Brandley. "We will hold those public officials accountable for their actions of refusing compensation for those who were wrongfully imprisoned. Their careers should be over if they cannot dispense justice. My brother Clarence and the families of the wrongfully convicted as well as the victims' families deserve more. Clarence and my family have paid a high price for their injustice."

Brandley was convicted for the 1980 rape and murder of a 16-year-old student at the Conroe school where he worked as a janitor. He was freed in 1990.

The judge who heard his plea for exoneration famously said, ""In the thirty years that this court has presided over matters in the judicial system, no case has presented a more shocking scenario of the effects of racial prejudice, perjured testimony, witness intimidation (and) an investigation the outcome of which has been predetermined."

The case became the subject of a made-for-cable movie.

Brandley has faced issues with child support since his release, and has lost a huge lawsuit he filed against various state agencies.

At today's press conference, organizers say, "Representatives of civil rights and community organizations, including Witness to Innocence, the National Black United Front, the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, and others will be present Wednesday in support of Brandley's claim for compensation."

Source: Houston Press, May 18, 2011

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The state of Texas administers another turn of the screw to Anthony Graves

Administrative madness on a grand scale, Texas style!

Anthony Graves

The injustices just keep on coming for exonerated death row inmate Anthony Graves, freed last year after 18 years' imprisonment for a 1994 capital murder conviction produced by false testimony and prosecutorial misconduct.

After his release, the Texas Comptroller's Office refused to pay the 45-year-old Graves $80,000 per year of wrongful imprisonment compensation because a judge neglected to put the magic words "actual innocence" in the order dismissing charges against him.

Gov. Rick Perry and special prosecutor Kelly Siegler, who helped exonerate Graves, have both acknowledged that he's innocent. But a spokesperson for Comptroller Susan Combs claimed her office did not have the authority to approve the payment. Graves is now suing the state to collect the money.

As the Chronicle's Harvey Rice reports, the Texas Attorney General's Office also is garnisheeing $175 a month from the former inmate's salary as a legal investigator for nearly $5,500 the state claims he owes in back child support while he was behind bars.

The state also seized a $250 honorarium that Graves was to be paid for a presentation to political science students at Prairie View A&M University about his prison ordeal.

"The state of Texas tried to kill me for something I didn't do, and now they are trying to get child support out of me," Graves told Rice. "I feel powerless."

According to a spokesperson for Attorney General Greg Abbott, because a judge ordered then-prisoner Graves to pay the child support in 2002, the AG's office has a legal obligation to collect the money. He did express sympathy for Graves, adding, "his experience is truly troubling and deeply compelling."

Obviously not troubling or compelling enough for the governor, the comptroller and the attorney general to get their heads together and try to cut through the bureaucratic red tape and remedy the continuing effects of a truly horrible miscarriage of justice.

The state took away Graves' freedom for much of his adult life, dismissed on a technicality the compensation owed him by law, and now bills him for the consequences of his wrongful imprisonment. It's a truly sickening situation.

Where there's a will to right an injustice, the most powerful officials in the state must find a way. If they had real sympathy for what this man has suffered, they'd promptly set things right.

Source: Houston Chronicle, Editorial, April 29, 2011

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Compensating the innocent

Small price to pay; As the number of exonerees grows, so does the question of compensation

IN OCTOBER 2010 Anthony Graves was released from death row in Texas. He had spent nearly 20 years in prison, having been charged, in 1992, with helping another man murder a family of six. That man had sworn that Mr Graves was his accomplice, but later had a change of heart. “I lied on him in court,” he said just before he was executed in 2000. That sent the wheels of justice turning, albeit slowly and creakily. In 2006 a circuit court overturned the conviction. Prosecutors began to reassemble the case, and realised that without the false statement, there essentially was none. The district attorney filed a motion to dismiss the charges. On that basis an innocent man was finally exonerated.

This sad story raises a number of troubling issues. Among them is the fact that Mr Graves has been denied any compensation from the state for his long years in prison. Under the state’s 2009 Timothy Cole Compensation Act—an older law which was updated and renamed for another exoneree, who died in prison while serving 25 years for a rape that another inmate subsequently confessed to having committed—people who are wrongfully committed of crimes may collect $80,000 from the state for each year they were imprisoned.

More than half of America’s states have similar laws, and they are being put to use. It is good news, albeit troubling, that hundreds of people have been exonerated in America in the past 20 years. The New York-based Innocence Project, which provides free legal representation to people who it hopes can be exculpated on the basis of DNA evidence, counts no fewer than 268 such exonerations since 1989. That figure partly reflects improved forensic technology, and does not include people such as Mr Graves, who are the victims of perjury or procedural errors and misconduct.

Financial compensation may be only a small response after the gross injustice that exonerees have suffered. But it can help the wrongly accused to rebuild their shattered lives and is a lot better than nothing, which is what some exonerees in some cases receive. Another egregious example comes from Louisiana. In 1985 a man named John Thompson was convicted of murder after prosecutors hid a blood test that would have cleared him of a prior conviction, for armed robbery. That conviction contributed to the murder charge, because in the light of it, Mr Thompson was advised not to testify in court; and, eventually, that led to a capital sentence. The concealed blood test led to another deathbed confession—this time from one of the prosecutors involved. After the confession came to light, both of the convictions were overturned.

Louisiana state law provides a measly compensation of $15,000 a year, up to a maximum of $150,000. Mr Thompson, who had spent 14 years on death row and was within weeks of being executed, sued the district-attorney. In addition to being unjust, it is illegal for prosecutors to withhold exculpatory evidence; they are obligated to turn it over to the defence. A circuit court awarded Mr Thompson $14m, but last month the Louisiana Supreme Court overturned that decision. The majority opinion acknowledged the violation, but held that there was no proof of “deliberate indifference” to civil rights. That is, at best, a technicality.

Anthony Graves:
"Not eligible for compensation"

As for Mr Graves, the holdup in his case rests on another technicality: the state comptroller’s office, which controls the money, noted that Mr Graves had not actually been declared innocent. That, of course, reflects the peculiarities of the case. The charges against Mr Graves were dismissed, per the order, because there was “no credible evidence” against him. The district-attorney decided that since he was obviously innocent, there was no need to go to the trouble of asking a court about it. Last month, Mr Graves sued—not directly to get the money, but to be officially declared innocent so he can be eligible for it. His lawsuit specifies that he “holds no grudge” against the state, and adds that he believes the comptroller “made an honest error” in denying his claim. If only all of America’s states could manage to be so fair-minded.

Source: The Economist, April 13, 2011

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Former DR prisoner Anthony Graves decries justice system

Anthony Graves

Anthony Graves spoke to students on Thursday evening in the University Teaching Center about capital punishment in the United States. Graves was wrongly convicted of the mass murder in 1992 and exonerated in 2010.

After surviving 18 years in prison and 2 death sentences, exonerated prisoner Anthony Graves encouraged students to change the system that imprisoned him.

The state accused Graves of taking part in the murder of 2 women and 4 children and setting their home on fire in 1992. The main witness in Graves’ trial, Robert Carter, was eventually executed for committing the murders. Before Carter’s execution, he admitted to lying under oath about Graves’ involvement. Graves was exonerated in October 2010.

“I am the walking example of the flaws of the death penalty because they tried to murder me twice,” Graves said in a lecture Thursday. “They can’t say Texas doesn’t execute innocents."

Graves spoke about the flaws in the state’s criminal justice system to about 40 people Thursday. The Campaign to End the Death Penalty, a national grassroots organization, hosted the talk partially to address the race and class disparity of inmates.

“It’s an epidemic,” Graves said. “Not a black-and-white issue, not a minority issue. It’s an epidemic."

Death penalty abolitionist Laura Brady compared the United States with Apartheid-era South Africa. From 1948 to 1993, South Africa incarcerated 851 black South Africans per 100,000 black residents. 5 % of the black population in the U.S., or 5,000 out of every 100,000 black residents, are inmates in the U.S., Brady said.

“So what does it mean when the leader of the free world locks up black men at a rate almost 6 times higher than the most openly racist country in our history?” Brady said. “More black men are in prison than attending college."

Brady said more black men are in prison, on probation or on parole than the number subjected to slavery prior to the Civil War.

Lawrence Foster, who also spoke at the event, is the grandfather of death-row inmate Kenneth Foster. A judge sentenced Kenneth Foster to death for acting as an accomplice in a burglary that resulted in a man’s death. Foster is currently serving a life sentence after having his sentence commuted by Gov. Rick Perry in 2007.

“Just imagine the agony of an individual as he is waiting to get executed, as he is waiting to have his life extracted from him,” Foster said, “That’s not execution; that’s murder."

Government lecturer Alan Sager said the death penalty deters crime.

“I used to not view the evidence this way,” Sager said. “However, as I saw the continuing studies over the years and an econometric study showing most death penalty studies reflect the bias of the researchers, my views have changed."

Source: Daily Texan, April 8, 2011

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