When Anthony Graves (pic­tured) was exon­er­at­ed from death row in Texas in 2010, he decid­ed that he would use his per­son­al expe­ri­ence as a cat­a­lyst for redress­ing the ​“injus­tice of the jus­tice sys­tem.” After receiv­ing $1.45 mil­lion as com­pen­sa­tion for the 18 years he was wrong­ly incar­cer­at­ed, includ­ing twelve years on death row, the nation’s 138th death-row exoneree cre­at­ed the Anthony Graves Foundation. Over the past two years, Graves has per­son­al­ly con­tributed more than $150,000 of his com­pen­sa­tion funds as part of the fledg­ling non­prof­it’s expen­di­tures towards free­ing oth­er inno­cent pris­on­ers and pro­vid­ing health-care ser­vices to recent­ly released pris­on­ers who lack the means to pay for med­ical treat­ment. Graves was wrong­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death as a result of what the Texas State Bar described as ​“egre­gious” pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. Now dis­barred for his actions, pros­e­cu­tor Charles Sebesta pre­sent­ed false tes­ti­mo­ny from a wit­ness impli­cat­ing Graves in the mur­der while at the same time with­hold­ing from the defense a con­fes­sion that the pros­e­cu­tion’s wit­ness had actu­al­ly com­mit­ted the mur­der. As in most death-row exon­er­a­tions, there was no DNA evi­dence in Graves’s case. Upon his release, Graves helped in the exon­er­a­tion of Alfred Dewayne Brown, anoth­er no-DNA case, in which pros­e­cu­tors sup­pressed a phone record that showed Brown could not have been at the scene of the crime when the mur­der occurred. The Graves Foundation then start­ed The Humane Investigation Project, focus­ing on labor inten­sive non-DNA cas­es that Innocence Projects rarely take. ​“A lot of guys fall through the cracks because of the cri­te­ria of these projects,” Graves said. ​“I’d be dead today, because I had no DNA in my case.” Among oth­er cas­es, Graves is cur­rent­ly work­ing to exon­er­ate still-incar­cer­at­ed for­mer Texas death-row pris­on­er Nanon Williams. When Graves was freed, doc­tors told him his arter­ies were clogged, the result of poor diet and health care. Because of his com­pen­sa­tion set­tle­ment, how­ev­er, he had mon­ey to see a doc­tor — a rar­i­ty for most peo­ple recent­ly released from prison. Recognizing the sever­i­ty of the health cri­sis faced by released pris­on­ers, the Graves Foundation opened a small health clin­ic in March 2016 to pro­vide low-cost and free care to those recent­ly freed and to their fam­i­lies. Paul Cates, spokesman for the New York-based Innocence Project, said many exonerees feel like Graves, com­pelled to fight for change in a crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem that wrecked their lives. ​“It doesn’t destroy their souls, and almost all of them some­how find a way to get beyond what hap­pened,” Cates said. The prospect of help­ing those whose shoes he’s been in con­tin­ues to moti­vate Graves. ​“I always stay pos­i­tive,” he said. ​“That’s how I came home.” It is a world­view summed up in the title of Graves’s new book, Infinite Hope: How Wrongful Conviction, Solitary Confinement, and 12 Years on Death Row Failed to Kill My Soul, sched­uled for release on January 16, 2018.

(B. Grissom, ​“Freed from death row, Anthony Graves uses com­pen­sa­tion to help oth­er inmates — includ­ing his best friend,” Dallas News, March 3, 2016; A. Graves, ​“Infinite Hope: How Wrongful Conviction, Solitary Confinement, and 12 Years on Death Row Failed to Kill My Soul”, Beacon Press (2018).) Read more about the Anthony Graves Foundation. See Books and Innocence.

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