Exonerated former death row inmate appointed to crime lab
A Texas man who suffered a miscarriage of justice just got the power to prevent future ones.
Anthony Graves, 49, who was finally set free in 2010 after spending 12 years on death row and 6 more behind bars for the killing of a woman, her daughter and her four grandchildren, is going to help manage a crime lab for Houston-area law enforcement agencies, the Houston Chronicle reported.
City officials appointed Graves to the board of the Houston Forensic Science Center on Wednesday, according to the local newspaper. Graves’ shocking case displayed prosecutorial misconduct by a district attorney who has since been disbarred, and the father of three told NBC News he’s ready to take on the new challenge.
“I became a criminal justice expert through my own experiences,” he said. “My university is d.r.u. – that’s death row university. I’m well-qualified.”
Graves told the news outlet he sweated through two execution dates while in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. The vicious 1992 murder of Bobbie Davis and her family rocked the town of Somerville in Burleson County, roughly 90 miles north of Houston, according to a documentary on Graves’ saga years later on CBS’ “48 Hours.”
The father of a 4-year-old boy murdered in the incident, Robert Carter, testified in the 1994 trial that Graves had helped him carry out the murders even though he had already told Burleson County DA Charles Sebesta that he had acted alone, the documentary notes.
“I watched the system just fail me from top to bottom,” Graves told NBC.
Carter repeated that Graves had nothing to do with the murders in a taped statement three years later and even said he had lied during the trial that ultimately convicted Graves while strapped to the gurney awaiting his own execution in 2000, 48 Hours reported.
A federal court finally threw out Graves’ conviction in 2006, but he wouldn’t walk out of jail a free man until four years later, when a prosecutor appointed to retry him found that the case didn’t stand up to facts uncovered through several years’ investigative work led by local journalism professor Nicole Casarez and her students. The prosecutor elected to free Graves after all that time.
“They were trying to kill me,” he said on 48 Hours. “I still can’t wrap my mind around how the hell did I go from my home to death row for a crime that happened in another town to people I don’t even know. It’s crazy…and I gave 18 years of my life. ”
But Sebesta, who had long since retired, continued to insist publicly that Graves had been guilty, Texas Monthly reported. That is, until the State Bar of Texas revoked his law license and formally disbarred him earlier this month for, among four other violations, not telling defense lawyers that the main witness in the case had recanted his testimony the day before he appeared in court.
And now Graves will have the opportunity to influence the lab that Houston Mayor Anise Parker and the City Council set up in 2013 to replace an earlier facility that had exhibited its own betrayals of the public trust, according to NBC News. He’ll be serving alongside a familiar face – Casarez.
“Anthony was convicted because the truth was not achieved,” Casarez, an attorney and a professor at Houston’s University of St. Thomas, told NBC. “So he understands the importance of always looking for truth and being mindful of our mission.” (New York Daily News)