Discussions with DPIC Podcast: Life After Death Row with Anthony Graves

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with for­mer death-sen­tenced pris­on­er Anthony Graves. Exonerated from Texas’ death row in 2010, Mr. Graves has since become an advo­cate for crim­i­nal jus­tice reform, cre­at­ing the Anthony Graves Foundation, work­ing with the ACLU and Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, and tes­ti­fy­ing before the U.S. Senate on prison con­di­tions. Mr. Graves has also authored an auto­bi­og­ra­phy titled Infinite Hope: How Wrongful Conviction, Solitary Confinement and 12 Years on Death Row Failed to Kill My Soul.

“I spent 6,640 days of my life in prison for a crime I knew absolute­ly noth­ing about,” said Mr. Graves. In 1994, Mr. Graves was con­vict­ed of help­ing mur­der a fam­i­ly that was killed two years ear­li­er. His con­vic­tion pri­mar­i­ly relied on the tes­ti­mo­ny of Robert Carter, who was cap­i­tal­ly charged and con­vict­ed of the crime, and who false­ly iden­ti­fied Mr. Graves as his accom­plice. Mr. Carter admit­ted that he lied about Mr. Grave’s involve­ment two weeks pri­or to his 2000 exe­cu­tion and again on the day he was exe­cut­ed. In 2006, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit over­turned Mr. Graves’ con­vic­tion after find­ing that pros­e­cu­tors elicit­ed false state­ments and with­held evi­dence. A spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor, Kelly Siegler, was appoint­ed to review Mr. Graves’ case and deter­mined Mr. Graves to be ​“an inno­cent man.” She called the pros­e­cu­tor Charles Sebesta’s han­dling of the case ​“a crim­i­nal jus­tice system’s night­mare;” Mr. Sebesta was lat­er dis­barred in 2015. As Mr. Graves explains in the pod­cast, ​“I had a rogue pros­e­cu­tor who was seek­ing a con­vic­tion at any cost. And I had a young man who lied on me to pro­tect his wife because they threat­ened to go after his wife with cap­i­tal mur­der if he did­n’t tell them, con­tin­ue to tell the sto­ry that he told against me.” 

On October 27, 2010, Mr. Graves was released from prison after Washington-Burleson County District Attorney Bill Parham filed to dis­miss all charges. After his wrong­ful impris­on­ment, includ­ing 12 years on death row, Mr. Graves describes his dif­fi­cult tran­si­tion to rejoin soci­ety. ​“I remem­ber my first few months, I did­n’t know if I could make it out here,” he said. ​“I mean, I was deal­ing with mild PTSD, and did­n’t real­ly know it…I was hyper­sen­si­tive. I cried a lot. People thought I was doing well, but at night­time, they did­n’t see that I was on my bal­cony and cry­ing at 2:30 – 3 in the morn­ing because I could­n’t sleep… It was over­whelm­ing at times. But because I had great friends, fam­i­ly, they were there for me to lean on.” 

Being exposed to ​“the inhu­man­i­ty of our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem” and see­ing the neces­si­ty for bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the incar­cer­at­ed, their fam­i­lies, and their lawyers inspired Mr. Graves to estab­lish the Anthony Graves Foundation and the Peer Navigator Project. The Project aims to train for­mer­ly incar­cer­at­ed indi­vid­u­als ​“to work along­side crim­i­nal defense attor­neys, to men­tor their clients and their fam­i­ly mem­bers, so that they…can hear from some­one who has the lived expe­ri­ence. …They have the lived expe­ri­ence [and] can now build trust and rela­tion­ships where attor­neys can’t with their clients.” Mr. Graves explains that ​“build­ing that trust and bridg­ing that com­mu­ni­ca­tion will help lead to the best results, and the best deci­sions being made in the case for everyone.” 

Mr. Graves believes that ​“strength­en­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion process,” ​“enhanc­ing access to qual­i­ty legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion,” and ​“imple­ment­ing safe­guards against mis­con­duct” are three key changes that should be imple­ment­ed in the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem to pre­vent future wrong­ful con­vic­tions. He also thinks that in dis­cus­sions regard­ing the death penal­ty, there needs to be a refram­ing of the ques­tion, away from ​“Do you believe in the death penal­ty?” to ​“Do you think the death penal­ty works?” Mr. Graves argues that ​“when you have [near­ly] 200 peo­ple who walked off of death row, who have been found to be inno­cent, you can, you can unequiv­o­cal­ly say no, that does not work, that it threat­ens inno­cent lives. We have the evi­dence now.” He adds that when peo­ple are con­front­ed with the sto­ries of death row exonerees ​“peo­ple are hit with the real­i­ty that we’re not deal­ing with an infallible system.”