Actual Innocence Podcast Season 1 Episode 25 - Anthony Graves Anthony: Hi I'm Anthony Graves, and I am an advocate for criminal justice reform. Brooke: Thank you for joining me for this episode of Actual Innocence, a podcast to help bring awareness of wrongful conviction and the need for reform in our criminal justice system. Last weekend I had the pleasure of visiting the Georgia Innocence Project and meeting with some of their staff and some of the people that they ve exonerated and the experience was overwhelming. We talked largely about the needs that people have after they have been exonerated. That experience has made me think and examine my show and I want to tell you that there are amazing things are in store for Actual Innocence. I m going to let you know that there will be another episode next week, but then in the following weeks, through the rest of the year we will be going to a bi-weekly schedule. I will be putting this in a calendar format on the website. I want to stress we are NOT podfading, Actual Innocence is here to stay and has amazing things in the works, including a three part season finale - that will be the last three episodes of the year - it s not something you re going to want to miss. Season 2 will start in January and it s going to be a story like you ve never heard before - I can t wait to tell it, but now onto today s episode of Actual Innocence. Anthony Graves was on death row and had two separate execution dates. He described the experience as pure hell, your worst nightmare. But my interview with Anthony was different than most, partly because it was video and I can see in his eyes, that this is a man who had been through hell, but was now using his experience to advocate for others and to live life as fully as he could. It was truly inspirational. I am Brooke, and this is Anthony's story. Brooke: I always like to start back at the very beginning. What was your life like before 1992? Anthony: I really don't like to talk about my life... Brooke: No..? Anthony: My life was, I was just a normal person. That's why I don't talk about it so much, because I wasn't a person that grew up in the poorest of the neighbourhoods, and had it bad that s not my story - I was a normal person, I had three kids, you know I did everything that I thought was the right thing to do. I never thought that someone would knock on my door and I'd end up sharing my story with you, on air, well on the screen. Brooke: You know why I think that's important though? Cause that tells my listeners that this isn't, that wrongful conviction isn't a problem for any type of person, it's not exclusive to someone who is poor, or someone who's black, or someone who's white, or someone who lives in a particular part of the country. Anyone can be wrongfully convicted. Anthony: Except for if you re making $75,000 or more in this country. Brooke: That s true, that s true. Anthony: You can hire, you can get get good legal representation at that point. So you ain t going through things that I went through if you re making $75,000 or more. So no, everyone is not susceptible to wrongful conviction. Those who are making $75,000 or less are more susceptible than those who are making $75,000 or more in this country. It's a money game.
Brooke: So, how old were you at that time? Anthony: I was 26. Brooke: Do you remember what you were doing on the day that the crime you were convicted of, happened? Anthony: Well I was wrongfully convicted of a crime in Burleson County and during that time I was at home with my family. I had alibi witnesses, my girlfriend was there and everything, but it wasn t enough to stop a young innocent African American man with no resources from going to death row. Brooke: And, can you tell me anything about the crime, like did you know what the crime was, had you heard of it? Anthony: No, well the crime, well uh, as I said occurred in the small town of Burleson County which was like 35 miles away from my home town. Six people were brutally murdered, they were shot, stabbed, bludgeoned to death, gasoline was poured on their bodies and the house was burnt down. So there was an outrage, because this was a small town where nothing like this had ever occurred. And they wanted justice, they wanted whoever had done the crime be brought in. So as a matter of fact, the Mayor decided that whoever committed the crime they didn t even deserve a trial, they should be caught and hanged and that s sort of the way they proceeded with the case. Low and behold a week later there was a funeral and a man showed up at the funeral with bandages, turned out this man was the father of one of the children that was murdered in the home. Well he became a person of interest, so the Texas Ranger who was at the funeral saw him and they asked if they could talk to him. They followed him home, picked him up and they took him to the DPS office where they interrogated him over 14 hours. Nobody knows what today, even today what he had said, but at the end of it he lied and called my name and said that I was involved in the crime with him. Well, he really didn t know of me, he knew of my name cause he had been married to a cousin of mine that I grew up with, but wasn t close to at that particular time. But he knew me through my cousin, knew my name because my cousin shared her family history and so he called my name, because he thought that he had seen me in a Jeep coming off the freeway onto the Feeder, when they were taking him to the DPS Office to interrogate him. So he thought one of the young black guys, there was four he said, that there was in the Jeep, he thought one of them was me. So when they pressured call the name of someone who could have done the crime with him, he called my name, not thinking that they would come and arrest me, but they would find that I had nothing to do with it and they would let him go, but that I would have not been arrested but I mean, that he s naivety cause what we realise today, is that, that s not how the system works. If you put somebody in the line of fire, they re going to get burnt if they don t have the resources. So he put me in this line of fire by lying on me, saying that I was involved in some crazy crime with him. That s all it took to take my freedom and possibly my life. The State moves with that theory knowing that they had nothing to substantiate these claims, knew that they had made him lie, but they didn t have the information that said that I was innocent, because that same night when the guy found out that they lied to him about letting him go, he recanted and started trying to tell the truth, but they didn t want to hear that. So the next day I was arrested and charged with capital murder. Nobody investigated, nobody tried to find out if the story was true, they just arrested me and charged me with capital murder and started trying to build a case up on me. Why? Well it s a small, rural town in Texas, and that s why, and I was young African American man with no resources, and that s why. Brooke: So what was your interaction with the police like? What was your interrogation like?
Anthony: I cooperated 110% which is what they got up on the witness stand and attested to, that Mr Graves has cooperated with us 110%. As a matter of fact even during the bond hearing the lead investigator got up there and said that there was nothing in the case that connects to Mr Graves to stand here. And I was denied bond by the Judge, the Judge was up for re-election, and I was stripped of 18 and a half years of my freedom, because they didn t want to have to admit that they had made a big mistake. So I suffered some political consequences and I almost lost my life. Brooke: So since you had no resources you had an appointed attorney? Anthony: Yes, I had a court appointed attorney who was African American, but never really tried a capital case, but definitely believed in me. I watched this man cry when they convicted me, but he was just outmatched, outwitted, and basically had a seasoned prosecutor who was used to getting away with these type of things. Brooke: Was it a jury trial? Anthony: Anytime you have a capital case, it s a jury trial. Brooke: And did the jury look like you, did they look like me? Was it a diverse jury? Anthony: Like you, there was like one African American and he was the foreman of the jury. I remember when my attorney asked me, he said they he was going to go back and find out who they picked as foreman, and there was all whites and one black at the time, and I told him that it was going to be the black guy, and he didn t understand why I was saying. And then he went back there, and he came back and he asked me, Hey how did you know it was going to be the black guy?, I said if they are going to convict me before they even hear the case, and they are going to put the black guy at the front as the face of the jury. That s why it was going to be the black guy, and it rang true, he was the foreman that convicted me, and he didn t realise that they took his right to vote not guilty away from him because he couldn t be the only person on the jury who voted not guilty, by then making him the foreman, they actually controlled his vote. He didn t even realise that, he had to vote guilty. If they were going to vote guilty, then he had to vote guilty, because he couldn t be the only one saying not guilty and looking like it was a race thing then. So he was put in a position and he couldn t really understand. I understood it which is why I told my attorney that it was going to be the black guy, because I grew up in the rural part of Texas and I understand racism and I understand how they prepped for it. So I knew that what they trying to do was convict me because I was a young black man and they had a white man saying that I did a crime, I didn t do. And they re going to put this black man at the front to give it credibility, by saying hey, this black man was the foreman of this jury and he was convinced that he was guilty so that s what it was. But in actuality the black man was the most powerless of all 12 of the jury. Brooke: Right, and do you remember how long the deliberated? Anthony: Yeah, an hour and a half. Brooke: An hour and a half Anthony: It took nine hours for the guilty indictment and then an hour and a half for the sentence to death. Brooke: So what happened next? Anthony: Well what happened next was I spent 18 and a half years living in hell, trying to prove my innocence. I was sentenced to death and until the execution date, I witnessed around 400 men getting murdered, men I had gotten to know and love as family and friends, seeing them not as monsters but
as human beings. But the State said they were not redeemable and ah, they were being murdered around me, sometimes twice a day. You know that s one of the things that sticks in my mind forever. It was, it was just, it was living in a nightmare and I did it for 6620 days, two execution dates, and now you know, and now I am here. Brooke: And I know that this sounds like a very naïve question, but what is death row like? Like when you wake up in the morning what happens? Anthony: That hell is life that is what it is like, 365 days a year. Whatever you think your worst hell is, that is death row. So when you think about you worst nightmare or your worst hell, then you talking about the life that I lived 24/7, 365 days a year, 18 and a half years. I can t just say death row is defined as one thing or another, other than whatever you think hell is, that s death row. Brooke: Is it isolation? You know, you got to know these men but Anthony: Yeah, we lived in solitary confinement. Well, it s just designed that way, so I lived in solitary confinement for 16 years of 18 and a half that I was incarcerated, so I didn t know anything about, I listened to men just losing their minds.. slitting their throats, cutting their wrists, overdosing on their medication, all cause they couldn t take the conditions of solitary confinement. Brooke: and you had two dates that you were supposed to be executed, and what stopped your executions? Anthony: Well, one of them was premature, I hadn t even gone through the appeal process yet, what was happening was the DA was relying on my attorneys to be inexperienced so that they could set an execution date, he didn t file the proper papers, they execute me and nobody asks of course. Luckily for me because I hadn t exhausted my appeals and I had a competent appeal attorney, at the time we were able to get a stay of execution based on the fact that I hadn t even exhausted my appeals. Brooke: And so, you are here and you re talking to me today, so what led to that? What were the steps that led to your exoneration, to your freedom? Anthony: Wow well, many steps. I went through many attorneys that came on, believed in my innocence, but because of the rule of justice takes a long time to turn, for one reason or another they were getting off my case so, I met this lady named Nicole Casarez. Nicole Casarez was a um, a journalism teacher at St Thomas University, and she had a class that she was teaching about wrongful convictions, she went and took a seminar for Texas Innocence Network who was getting ran by a guy named David Dow. David Dow was holding the class on wrongful convictions, Nicole and her students showed up at their class and it so happened that they were talking about my case because a freelance journalist had gotten in touch with them and told them that y all should look into this case. So they were talking about my case that day, telling them that it was a short fuse, there wasn t a lot of investigation and wanted to know who would be willing to investigate the case, just to find out what was going on in the case. And Nicole and her students looked at each other and they raised their hands, to say that they just wanted to look into the case. And they didn t go into the case thinking that I was innocent or guilty, they just wanted to look into the case. They got looking into the case and what they found was unbelievable. Ah and so, they ended up staying with me for 8 years overturning every rock to find my innocence and in 2010 I was exonerated by a special prosecutor who had already put 19 men on death row so she wasn t no bleeding heart liberal, but she was so fast, so egregious that the prosecutor had to do everything he could to withhold the fact of my actual innocence, and is was actually criminal. So she moved to have my case dismissed and have me exonerated, because she believed in my absolute innocence, and I ended up here today because, after what I witnessed, what I had gone through and seen the people who had fought the fight for me to regain my freedom, I
decided that that was the torch that needed to be carried by me to fight for other people s freedom, that I knew was wrongfully convicted and had mental illness issues, that needed therapy or counselling other than the consolation. So I picked up the mallet and I have been out advocating for a better justice system ever since. Brooke: I have a couple of questions based on what you just said, um, the first one is, actually I am a social worker and I work with people who ve suffered from severe traumas, were you able to access mental health care after you left? Cause like you said, you had been in hell for many years, like were those resources available to you? Anthony: Well you know, the funny thing about it is, I think that the resources were available to me, I just didn t know about them. That s the big problem with guys who re-entering into society, that there may be resources available, but they don t know about them cause they re not promoted or highlighted on television or anything like that. Really it s like a needle in a haystack, you really have to find it. So, because of that I started the Anthony Graves Foundation I became a hub for those resources, so people can call me and I can connect them to the resources that are available. So yeah, when it comes to the mental illness, I can share a story with you. I decided I was going to and try and get some counselling, you know just talk to somebody about my experience. I met with this counsellor and we talked for maybe 30-40 minutes, but she was so distraught, she was so shook up about my story that I ended up feeling like she owed me money, because she used up all of her tissues. So I knew then it wasn t going to work for me one on one, so I knew that the best thing for me was to take it to the stage, and let everyone hear my story. So now what I do is I publicly speak about my story in front of crowds of people and that sort of gave me my life back and it helps me to get through what I ve gone through. So people don t understand when they come to hear me speak that I m using them to help get my life back, but it s a win/win situation. Brooke: And that was my second thing I was going to ask you about... You have become an advocate for people who have been wrongly convicted and I was just wondering what kind of groups do you speak to? Anthony: I speak all over the world, I speak to criminal justice reform groups, I speak to district attorneys around the country and their offices, I speak to defence attorneys, I speak to prosecutors, I speak to judges across the country, I speak to law enforcement across this country. Law schools, churches, I have been all over the place, I have spoken in the oldest church in Rome. I ve been to Switzerland, and Sweden and Paris, and all the States. I did a congressional hearing at the Senate with Senator Dick Durben on solitary confinement, it was a historical event, and it had never been done. I speak at the Congressional Black Caucus, on issues involving criminal justice reform. I work on legislation with local senators on reform in our system. So I use my story to put it in front of those who have influences to make change. Brooke: And I noticed that on your shirt other people can t see it because this is a podcast and they re listening but is it Anthonybelieves.com is that, if somebody wanted to get a hold of you, to like, to hire you for a speaking engagement? How would they do that? Anthony: Yeah if they want to get a hold of me, they go to Anthonybelieves.org and you can just, you know there is a questionnaire on there and everything, it asks you if you want to book me what the subject would be etcetera etcetera. You can get me on my website. Brooke: So I have a couple more questions and these questions are ones that I always ask, but you have such an inspirational after story... I was just in Atlanta last weekend, and I was talking to some exonerees that are kind of down on their luck, like they, they had told me that it is better to have
committed the crime and be paroled, or be put on probation than to have been exonerated, because there is more programs. Do you think that is true all over, or do you think that that s a Georgia thing? Anthony: Definitely, because we haven t embraced the fact that we re a country that will actually sending innocent men to prison, so it s like an anomaly, it s like uh, we don t have programs designed for those men, because we don t think that we are sentencing innocent men. So why create programs for innocent men returning back to society if were not sentencing innocent men. All programs are for those who have done the crime and served the time and are trying to return back to society. Those programs are set up for those guys, they re not set up for someone that you ve wrongfully convicted and now you have to help make an adjustment back into society. Because there are different rules in that game. Number 1, you owe this man, you owe them for punitive damages, for all the things you ve done to him and his family Over here, this man s served his time, over here, this man has paid his debt to society, so you have programs to help him come back home. But you have no programs for the man that you messed over, because you refuse to believe that s what you re actually doing. So yeah, I believe that s happening all over the country, because nobody wants to wrap their head around the fact that we are actually convicting innocent people and were actually executing innocent men. We ve got to wrap our head around that, because now have to make change, and change is hard to come by in a system, uh how do I say, kind of prey s itself on its victims. So I think that in order to get a better system, the mindset has to change first and foremost, we need to seek justice for everyone, not those that look like us, but for everyone. When we can wrap our heads around the fact that it s supposed to be a system for all of us, and not just some of us, then we can get to some of the hard questions and find some solutions for them, but until then we have this, how can I say it s like a gap, it s like there s something missing in terms of, everyone wants to think when someone is wrongfully convicted it s an isolated incident, although numbers and statistics show that it s not isolated, but we trust our system so much that we think that our eyes are lying to us when it comes to the numbers and things, because that gives us our false sense of security, how dare you take that from us by telling us that our system doesn t work. So you have to get through all of that first, before you can get to the reform. You have to reform the minds of the people and how they see and feel about their criminal justice system. Our criminal justice system has become criminal, and we re responsible for that, because we are refusing to acknowledge that we have big problems in our system, and it starts with the fact that there is disconnect between the different races of people out here. So when you have 95% of your elected DA s across your country are white, and then you re looking at your numbers or your statistics of why so many African Americans, who only make up 13% of the population are 46% of the incarceration rate, it goes back to the disconnect between the white district attorney and the black defendant and because there is a disconnect and the prosecutor, this white DA, has the power and he can prey on his fears, this man gets sentenced to life, but if this young white man came in he gets help. And it s not about so much that is, yeah to a certain point it s racism, but it s also the fact that I don t know you, and I ve been taught to fear you. And so, because I ve been taught to fear you when you come in, and my counterpart who looks like me, says that you ve done something, I d be more inclined to believe my counterpart because I ve been poisoned by all this rhetoric since I was a kid, that you re a bad person, that your race are bad people. So 95% of our elected DA s get that challenge everyday of How do I deal with this young black man who I have no connection to? We have a civil rights problem in our country, and that is, that there is not enough diversity in our district attorney s office across the country, and that s leading to a lot of wrongful convictions, and that s something people are not addressing. Because we want to think that because it is written on paper, that we can follow the rules, I m sorry that s just not the way it goes. And so yeah, and so
knowing these things, is why I felt it was so important for me to get out of here and carry on this mission. Brooke: I think that s great, and I think that s great that you re not afraid to say that. That you re not afraid to identify the problem and give it a name. Anthony: Well maybe 20 years ago I might have been afraid, but you had sentenced me to death, given me two execution dates and murder a lot of people around me, you cannot threaten me with that, you cannot threaten me with hell, that s what I always said. Because everyone you killed never came back and complained, so you cannot threaten me with that. I will speak the truth and I will live with it or die with it, but you can t threaten me with hell. Brooke: So what advice might you have for someone who finds themselves in a position of being wrongfully accused or wrongfully convicted, what would you tell that person? Anthony: I would say, fight, fight and fight some more. Every day that you get up and write a letter and ask someone to help save your life, is a day closer to your freedom. Every day you get up a miss an opportunity to write a letter to ask someone to help save your life it s a day for the State. OK, so you have to choose who are you going to fight for, the State or for yourself? That means that you have to get up and you have to communicate with the world, and let the world know about the injustice that you incur, not only that, but you ve got to keep a positive mind, you gotta know that you re going to stand on the truth whether you live or die, and you ve got to be, you can t be afraid of which one happens first, you ve got to stand on truth. And if you re standing firmly on the truth, you ll get through anything, whether you come out of there walking or if you come out in a cardboard box, you can live and die with yourself knowing that you stood on truth. So I will say to any man who is innocent behind those bars, stand on truth or suffer the consequences. Cause then and only then, can we really, really make changes to our justice system. Brooke: And so, I get this question, I ve gotten over 100 letters of people asking me what they can do to help, people who are not attorneys people who just listen to the stories on my show, what can they do to help people who have been wrongfully convicted? Anthony: Number 1 I would say the first thing you can do is reach out to them and let them know that they have unconditional support, that you don t know him, but you support him, just because. That s the first thing, so that he can feel like he s not in this fight alone. Next thing after that, that there is a local legislative body, there is council members, there is senators, there are state representatives that you can write to and voice your concern about a certain case. You can do that. You can go to hearings that are legislative hearings, you can sign up to speak on bills, you can do a lot of things because you are a citizen of this state, and it s all of our system. Do not feel that you don t have a voice, it is your system and you have a voice, you can go up there and be heard, you can speak in front of your legislative body, you can write to your congressman, you can set up an appointment for them and talk to them about it and voice your concerns about this case. You know there are so many things that you can do, but the first thing you have to do, is reach out to the one you want to help, and just let him know that you re there. And I promise you that a whole mountain will unfold before your eyes as to how you want to help an innocent man, save his life. Brooke: Is there anything else that you want to say that I didn t talk about? Anthony: Well I just want to say that through my experience and all the things that I have done out here, I ve been the first to use the law to disbar the prosecutor who wrongly convicted me. I did that last year and to me that gave me some closure, but more importantly I ve written a book about it that should be coming out uhh in the early months of next year, it s called Infinite Hope Infinite Hope
how the state failed to kill my soul. And it s going to be coming out in the next couple of months. I would say to anyone, get it and read it, it s very educational and inspirational because it also talks about holding on to the things that you believe in that can get you though, what you are going through. It s what I did, you know uh, I remember the time when I was given uh, and they had indicted me of the crime, and I had been reading about it because I was innocent, and I came and the next day they indicted me and they brought me the papers, and I ll never forget I had just been reading the Bible, and so when I got these indictment papers I was so upset that I took the Bible and I just threw it up against the wall, I didn t want to believe nothing that it was saying to me, because here I was innocent and then they told me that all I had to do was go to God and pray and that everything would be alright. And yet, here I am getting indictment papers, and I had been praying and I d been reading this Bible every day, why am I getting indictment papers, they told me just go to God with this, so I was really upset with God, so I threw the Bible and I threw at the side of the wall, I didn t want nothing to do with it. Later on that night, my soul was disturbed, I couldn t sleep, no sleep nothing it was like 2 or 3 in the morning, and something just said go and pick your Bible, now I had been frustrated all day, but for some reason I went and pickedthat Bible up, and I can t remember that exact word, I mean that exact page, but I remember the passage and it said that God hadn t put nothing on me that I couldn t get back. And when I read that it just renewed all my hope and fight for justice and I never looked back. I never looked back, and my faith just continued to grow, and through my adversity my faith continued to grow. And I never looked back. And today I am writing about this, how you can overcome with faith. Brooke: I m Brooke, thanks for listening. I want to say a special thank you to the Georgia Innocence project for hosting our meeting last weekend. Thank you to everyone who attended the meeting and especially Larry who probably saved my life. Next week will be an interview with an exoneree and then after that will be every other week episodes while I prepare for the amazing season finale and continue to work on Season 2. You will be able to see a schedule of episodes by visiting our website at www.actualinpod.com Now here is Stephanie with the credits and a reminder on how to stay in touch Stephanie: This episode of Actual Innocence was hosted and produced by Brooke Gittings. The Actual Innocence volunteer team is Stephanie Sottile, Sarah Nelson, Megan Delaney with production assistance from Matt Ryan. Our executive producer is Dennis Robinson. You can find us on twitter at actual in pod or email us at actualinnocenpod@gmail.com. Special Thanks to our sponsors ABC and Framebridge. Until next time listen, learn, and advocate for justice!