Grave Injustice

This is definitely a life and death struggle.

I don't think the stakes get any higher than what's at stake here. This is a man's life who's on the line. [MUSIC] The thing about this case, it's hard to deal with is those little babies. In this fire gutted house, firefighters found six bodies.

It was a shock to everybody. It was probably the most brutal crime that ever happened in that part of the state. You're talking about four little babies, a sleep in their bed, a 16-year-old, a sleep in her bed, and their grandmother, who's also killed at the age of 45.

When she took that last breath, I guarantee you.

“Her last thought was, how am I going to protect those babies now?”

Whoever committed the crime was in a frenzy, it was 66 stab wounds. [MUSIC] 66, 66, minimum of 66, by the way, those are the ones that they counted. Those were living people. Those are my daughters, that was my niece and my nephew.

Who can do that? That's what's so horrible. There's a lot of pressure to find this person or these people that have done this. Four days after the crime, law enforcement had their suspect. They got their man, and that's the end of the story.

They did not do their job. Tunnel vision. Tunnel vision.

“Anthony Gray, so it's convicted of being in the campus.”

I'm absolutely convinced that he's innocent. I'm a professor, I'm not paid to be a lawyer. I do it because I believe in it. Nicole and her students played a really pivotal role in this. What did you see yourself as being up against?

- We're taxes, we like to execute people. - How many people have you put up on death row? - A lot. There's nothing wrong with winning when you're convicted people who aren't guilty. We want to get him out.

We think he is truly an innocent person. I've written crime stories for Texas Monthly for 13 years. What I wanted to do was to try to get to the bottom of what had happened in this case.

“There is an innocent person who is going to death row if I don't do my job.”

Does this man get to live? Does this man get to die? This was such a horrific event in that town and continues to be an event that really hunts the people of Somerville. This used to be where the Davis family lived before the early morning hours of August 18,

1992 in the midst of the rubble, the police found those six bodies, all members of the same family. - This was a family that almost everyone in town knew liked, respected. The victims, a grandmother, her daughter, and four grandchildren who were staying with them.

Water Pam Coloff is still moved by the fact that the family never had a chance.

- There was Bobby Davis, the grandmother of the four children who was bludgeoned and then stabbed to death. There was 16-year-old Nicole, her daughter, who was a high school student and athlete who was bludgeoned and shot, and then there were the four grandchildren. They were nine-year-old D'Netra, six-year-old Brittany, five-year-old Learyon, and four-year-old

Jason. My daughters were exactly beautiful. - Glenda Rutledge was Learyon and Brittany's mother. - They were my legacy, and I was so looking forward to the chance to get it right. It's a race-strong, sure, confident, successful women, you know, I wanted to do that so bad.

- Glenda's ex-husband Keith Davis lost almost his entire family that night. - These were little babies, and my mother, who we adore, who was a sinner of our life. He was convinced it was a random cry. - I just couldn't imagine someone from that area, harm in any one of my family because

we had never, we didn't have any enemies, we hadn't been any trouble.

Roy Ritter lived and worked not far from the murders. Five days after the crimes he remembers hearing, there was a break in the case. - I could hear the radio, and the news had always come on, and it was early in the morning, and they came up and they said, you know, a rest had been made, and they said,

- Anthony Graves was one of Ritter's best friends, Graves had worked for him for a while at his machine shop, and the two became so close, the Graves had even been in Ritter's wedding party. It just freaked me out, but my immediate thing was, yeah, no way, and what, you know, what

“could possibly be going on here, you know, you didn't believe it?”

- Well, of course not, absolutely not. Ritter knew Anthony Graves as a gentle man, a father of three, and he now was hearing his friend was a murderer of women and children.

- In my heart, my convictions were, that's impossible because Anthony would never do that.

Anthony would never hurt or raise a hand to a woman, and especially not a child, especially the way he loved his children. And when Graves was arrested, he seemed equally stunned. Roy was so sure of his best friends' innocence that he even put up $10,000 of his own money to hire a top lawyer for his upcoming hearing, convinced it would all soon be over.

There's no way they have anything, they don't have anything. But police did have the words of this man.

“Robert Carter was the father of the youngest victim, four-year-old Jason, an investigator”

has had grown suspicious when they noticed Carter had injuries that were hard to explain. - At the funeral for the victims, Robert Carter showed up heavily bandaged on the left side of his face and his left hand, and the bandages were covering up severe burns. - Carter claimed he burned himself after his lawnmower blew up. - The Texas Rangers obviously noticed Mr. Carter at the funeral he was difficult to not

notice, and they visited him at his house after the funeral and took him in for questioning. - Carter insisted he had nothing to do with the murders, but the Rangers had learned that he had a motive. Carter was married, but he had recently been served with a demand for child support from another woman, the mother of his son, Jason, an investigator's believe Carter went there to kill Jason.

- He very clearly wanted his four-year-old son, Dad. - After the murders investigators believe Carter set the fire to cover his tracks, but from the beginning they believed he must have had help, there were so many victims and so many weapons. - There was again, there was a knife, and there was a hammer, and investigators found

it difficult to believe that one person could have wielded three different objects in killing six different people.

- The Rangers interrogated Carter for hours, and he finally gave them a name.

- During his interrogation, Robert Carter placed himself at the crime scene, but he said that he had not taken part in the murders himself, that the person who had committed the murders was a man named Anthony Graves, who is his wife's first cousin. - Within hours, Anthony Graves had been arrested and taken to the police station. He took a light detector test and failed.

- Man, this victim was the captain murder, I know you sounded good in my life, so our dream was a lie, man. - At first there was little more than Carter's word to tie Anthony to the case, but investigators would soon get help from the last place anyone would expect. Anthony's best friend.

And then they asked me if I'd ever known I'm a carrying knife. - I said I gave Anthony a knife one time. - In summerville, Texas, nothing moves very swiftly, except for the occasional freight train. And sometimes the desire for justice. - Emotions were running so high in summerville, leading up to these trials that the mayor

at the time said that people in the community didn't even want a bother that they wanted to bring back the hanging tree. - But events would unravel a little more conventionally. Robert Carter stood trial and was quickly convicted, and then it was time for Anthony Graves, the man whom Carter had named as his accomplice.

“- Things you see in the horror movie, is it I did it?”

- Did you? - No. We're never doing anything like that.

- I'm not a violent person at all. - It was just crazy.

In fact, there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime.

“- Unlike whatever's going on is going to be cleared up, so I haven't done it there at all.”

- But authorities only focused more on Graves.

He had said he'd never owned a knife, but investigators learned he once did, and that it was

given to him by his good friend, Roy Ritter. - And I said I gave Anthony a knife one time around his birthday, and I had one that's exactly like it, and they asked me if I still had that knife, and I said yep. - The actual murder weapons were never found, but investigators wanted Ritter's knife. - The one he said was identical to the knife he gave Graves.

- And they said would you mind if we examined it? - I said no, I wouldn't mind at all. - Ritter thought the knives were too flimsy to inflict any serious wounds, and some of the victims had knife wounds that went through their skulls. So Ritter was stunned when those test results came back.

- The blade fit inside the skull can't perfectly.

So all of these folks in the DA's office told you that you were a knife, which was identical to the one you gave Anthony, fit perfectly into the holes in those baby skulls. - Yes sir. - What did you make of that? - I do want to believe it, because if that were true, my friend was a murderer.

And his friend Anthony Graves's murder trial began in October 1994, District Attorney Charles Sebastian Star Witness was Robert Carter. - I would have hated to have had to go on to the jury without Carter's testimony. But Carter was a problem witness, he was a liar. He had changed his story several times, sometimes implicating Graves, sometimes not.

“And so when he got on the stand, were you worried about what he would say?”

- No. - Why? - Because I told my attorney, I wanted him to testify, I said because there's no way this man could look me in my face and lie on me. I was just trying to have faith in the fact that this guy would be honest, you know, because

this is my life, this is my life. - So what did he say when he got up on the stand? - He lie. He lie. He said I'd do the crime with you.

- Carter took the stand and said it was Graves who stabbed several victims to death. And Roy Ritter had to testify about the knife he gave Graves. - I mean, it was a very bad position to be put in. It was very torn, you know, conflicted, conflicted about it. But they said it fit perfectly how did his testimony feel to you as opposed to the other

testimony? - I'd betray him. - I'd betray him. - Because he knows me, he's a man, new me, new my family, new my keys. - And there were more damaging witnesses waiting to testify against Graves.

It's a best to said he had found five people at the jail where Graves and Carter were held who told him they heard them talking about the murders. - When you have five people who overhear conversations, very damning conversations between Carter and Graves on what they did and what they'd got to do, that in itself, that's significant.

That's very admissible. - I probably could have done with one or two and a half on a murder case he won't as much as you can, we had five. - Sebastian May have had corroborating witnesses, but Anthony had alibi witnesses, where were you that knife?

Us and my mother's a problem with my brother, a lady friend and my sister.

Anthony's brother Arthur Curry testified for him and has never changed his story.

- My brother never left the house that knife, never, he never, he never, he never left the house that knife. - Anthony's girlfriend, another alibi witness, was set to take the stand as well, but when the day came, she unexpectedly refused. The man who lost most of his family, Keith Davis, had heard more than enough.

- I've seen his guy hundreds of times in court.

“When you looked at Anthony Graves, what did you see?”

- A murderer. It was though he had horns like a devil. He looked like an evil person at me at the time. - And the jury agreed, Anthony Graves was convicted of six counts of capital murder, the sentence, death.

I go from my home, who has supposed to be safe, feels safe, and I'm going to death wrote, something I didn't even do.

“- As it turns out, the jury might not have heard everything.”

- They did not know that there was a critical piece of evidence missing.

- I'm not a final person, I'm not a bad person, I respect people, I care myself in the dignified manner. Why me? I've all the people in the world, why me? - By 2002, Anthony Graves had spent eight years on death row.

One more inmate who swore he was innocent as the state of Texas moved ever closer to executing him. - Were you thinking about your death?

- No, never thought about my death, thought about my life.

- My children come home, then I just need to hold on to something, a good memory. - Anthony's optimism may have kept him going on death row, but for his family, as the years passed, it was getting harder to keep hope alive. - I couldn't feel like it at the end of the tunnel, and just to even father him being put to death, that would be the ultimate nail in all of our caskets.

If they killed him, for nothing. - Robert Carter was executed and Graves kept losing his appeals. He was running out of chances when his case caught the attention of the innocence network, which sent the case to Nicole Casores' journalism class at Houston's University of St. Thomas.

- We weren't out to prove anyone innocent. That was not our goal, our goal was just to find out the truth.

“- Did you have any faith in them, I mean, did you think they could help you?”

- Yeah, because being exonerated by the public meant just as much to me as being exonerated by the courts, I wanted people to know that my mother didn't raise a murderer. My mother raised a good son. That meant something to me. It didn't take long for the students and their professor to realize the case against Anthony Graves

had serious problems beginning with the star witness. - I think one of the first things that we noticed was that Robert Carter had recanted his testimony against Anthony right before he was executed, and that's very unusual. - In May of 2000, while strapped to the gurney in the Texas death chamber, Robert Carter took sole responsibility for the murders.

It was me and me alone, he said, Anthony Graves had nothing to do with it. I lied on him in court.

“- And I think it's really important to listen to someone's essentially dying words.”

If there's ever a time when someone might be telling the truth, I would think that might be it. - In fact, for years before his execution, Robert Carter said to anyone who would listen that Anthony had nothing to do with the crimes. He even said the only reason he named Graves as his accomplice was because he saw him on the street before he was arrested.

- I think Graves did not have any court in the murder and some was not present in court. - This is Robert Carter in a 1997 statement, in it he says he told Sebastian the same thing. In fact, he swears, he said that to Sebastian, just hours before he took the stand in Graves' trial. - I told him yesterday that he'd tell him to investigate, and Graves had nothing to do with his words. - But Sebastian didn't believe him.

Carter went on to testify against Graves anyway, because he said he felt pressured by the DA. - Without Robert Carter's testimony, the state didn't have a case.

- Except a fence lawyer says Sebastian never told them that Carter had just recanted,

as Sebastian was required to do by law. - Imagine that your Anthony's attorney, and you are facing Robert Carter on Cross Examination, and how meaningful would it have been for you? To be able to say, Mr. Carter isn't a truth that just five minutes ago, you said Anthony Graves had nothing to do with this. What would Robert Carter have said, would he have cracked, would he have taken back his testimony, will never know?

- His response was that what is that his eighth or ninth story?

- But Graves' attorney denies that, while the lawyers spent years arguing before a pellet court's about what Sebastian did or did not tell the defense, the students were gathering new evidence on the off-chance that Graves might get a new trial. - We did weekend trips, and we would take two cars, and we wouldn't have a list of people in places that we were going to go. - And the amateur investigators were uncovering troubling evidence, especially about those jail house witnesses who Sebastian said overheard incriminating statements from Graves, from nearby cells, and over the intercom.

- It was Texas Summer, so there were large fans running. One of the intercoms was actually ripped out of the wall, and it was just wires. - Megan Bingham is one of the students.

“- That may be this intercom system, wasn't all that fantastic. What could you hear was it actually working?”

- They were working.

- Some of the intercoms and some of the cells were not working.

I don't know which ones, but I do know that at least one of those intercoms on one and two or whatever cells they were, was working. - How do you know that? - Because I was totally as my law enforcement. - Nicole and the students also tracked down and met with Graves' former girlfriend, the one who could have provided him an alibi, if she had taken the stand. - She said she was very sorry that she hadn't testified at Anthony's original trial.

- So, why didn't the girlfriend testify? Right before she was supposed to take the stand, D.A. Charles Sebastian said an open court that she was a suspect in the case. - And might be indicted, even though investigators had nothing on her. - Sir, couldn't that be read though, it's sort of a coy play, if you will, to scare away a woman who could very well alibi your defendant. - Had absolutely nothing to do with that.

- She fled in fear and in tears. She said they put him in jail on nothing.

“What's to stop them from putting me in jail on nothing?”

- After a four-year investigation talking to more than 100 witnesses, Nicole Caseras and her students turned over their findings to Graves' lawyers to help with his appeals. - Anthony Graves is innocent. - Anthony Graves is innocent. Anthony Graves is an innocent man. - But Anthony Graves remained behind bars on death row until March 2006, about 12 years after he was found guilty.

- And then he got his first big break, a federal appeals court, one of the toughest in the country, tossed out his conviction.

- A cry, a pump of piss and I was like, "Yes, God is good, yes, I knew it." - A case with overturned, somebody seemed to... - District Attorney's office. - The court's skewered Charles Sebesta called his behavior egregious for among other things intentionally withholding evidence that could have helped Graves most notably. - The Carter had recanted right before he testified.

- That's a great, he had not ever been important in murder, he was not afraid. - But even after the court's decision, Anthony was not a free man. Sebesta had retired, but the new DA said he would try Graves again. - So Anthony walked out of death row and into the county jail where he sat, waiting for his next trial for four years. - When you can't believe that it could actually happen in real life, but it did.

- This time around Graves has a seasoned defense team appointed by the judge, Katherine Skardino and Jimmy Phillips assisted by Nicole Casarez. - We don't know what we do without her. I mean, she's like our graves in Cyclopedia. - The lawyers will have to be on their toes because this is their opponent. - Like your man, like your pride, like he hit his dog. - Kelly Seagler, widely regarded as the toughest prosecutor in Texas.

- Why does that say about David Tim? - It's been appointed to handle the grave's case. - Have you ever lost a capital case? - A death penalty case? - Yeah. - No.

“- What if everything you learn in history class was only half the story?”

- I'm Dr. Hoony bought host of Hidden History. Every Monday, I go where history gets mysterious. - Vanish civilizations, doomsday prophecies, paranormal phenomena and events that science still can't fully explain.

- Listen to and follow Hidden History, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

- I would say this is one of the worst capital murder cases that anyone could ever talk about or deal with. - Kelly Seagler should know she sent 19 men to death row. - You will hear from the evidence in this case. - So in February 2010, she was ready, willing and eager to make it an even 20, when she was appointed to retry Anthony Grey.

“- Did that scare you that she was coming after you?”

- No. Why not? - I was standing up for what was right, so I did make no difference. Who was on the case? - The fact that I was ill is the one gonna change. - By the fall of 2010, Pam Coloff's investigation of the case had produced one of the longest articles in the history of Texas Monthly Magazine. - There were so many things about this case that fascinated me beginning with how weak the evidence was.

- I wanted to understand how someone could be sent to death row, on so little evidence.

- Of course, making Grey's case in print is a lot easier than making it in court. - With the trial data approaching, Kelly Seagler circling, defense attorneys, Katherine Skardino and Jimmy Phillips were feeling the pressure. - You make a mistake in a death penalty case, and it's over. - They chose to hire a good prosecutor. We're gonna have to work hard and be doubly triply prepared. Kelly is a formidable opponent.

- Seagler has beaten most of the best lawyers in Texas. - And now she asked for a meeting with the Graves team.

“- Why did she want to meet with us? Was she trying to get information from us? Was she trying to learn what our trial strategy was?”

- I didn't really know what to make of it. - Seagler met with the Graves lawyers around this table, and she asked a lot of questions. - But the defense team could not have imagined why. - The prosecutor, with her 19-0 record on death penalty cases, was having serious problems with the case against Anthony Graves.

- I read every page of every document in 25 boxes, and at some point it switched from getting ready to go to trial to, can we go to trial to, "Oh my God, what happened here?" - Seagler and her investigator, Otto Hannick, soon realized, Nicole and her students were right on target. - Every single time we would reinvestigate or re-talk to a witness that they had talked to,

we would find that they were right. - One by one, the pillars of the prosecution's case crumbled. - We tried to find paperwork, people, anything that we could, especially emotive, to say Anthony Graves committed the capital murder with Robert Carter, and we found nothing. - Otto Hannick tried to confirm the testimony from Sebastian's jailhouse witnesses.

- We can't find anybody that could positively say, "In court," or in this room, that I heard Anthony Graves say this. I heard Robert Carter say this. - He looked into Roy Ritter's knife. - The blade is flimsy.

- And according to Hannick, a knife this flimsy could not have caused the kind of wounds to the skulls that were found on some victims. - I personally do not believe that that blade is strong enough, nor is this knife made well enough, to go through human skulls. - It's a switch blade knife.

They're made pretty sturdy. - DA trial, Sebastian had argued Graves' identical knife, had inflicted 66 stab wounds the night of the murder. - There's no doubt that that knife could have survived that. We had Texas Ranger testimony that it could have done it.

- But Hannick, who is a former Texas Ranger himself, believes the knife would have left its mark on the killer. - When you get down to the 10th, 11th, 12th, stab wound, the knife becomes very slippery. It becomes very bloody. The person that inflicted those wounds is also going to have an injury themselves.

“- And did Anthony Graves have any injuries on his hands?”

- None at all. - Did Robert Carter have any injuries on his hands? - No. - What does that tell you? - That tells me that this is not the knife that caused those injuries. Seagler thought any new case against Graves would have to be built almost solely on Robert Carter's

testimony. But that was before she found out how Charles Sebastian got that testimony from his star witness. - He made a deal with Mr. Carter. - And what a deal he made.

- Sebastian had a powerful card to play.

Carter's wife, Teresa.

She had given conflicting statements about his burns. There were a number of things that she did. - The deal, Sebastian made, he would not question Carter about his wife on the stand if he testified against Graves. - How does a prosecutor, I should say,

“how does an ethical prosecutor put a witness on the stand?”

Your main piece of evidence in a death penalty case and say, okay, you get up there and talk about what you did and what Graves did. But I'm not going to ask you about your wife. You can't do that. - Why in the world would you agree not to ask him about her?

- Well, I needed his testimony. - And Sebastian points out the deal was approved by a judge

and the defense never questioned it.

- I put on the record. I did put on the record. - The indictment against Carter's wife was later dismissed due to a lack of evidence. - And Seagler never bought into Sebastian's theory that there had to be multiple killers. - We appreciated the fact that you didn't have to have three killers because five of the people

killed were children, some little babies asleep in their bed.

“How hard is it for a grown man to stab little babies asleep in their bed?”

- And all the evidence Seagler says points to Robert Carter, not Anthony Graves. There must have been a moment when you concluded G West, this guy's innocent. Not just not guilty, but innocent. - But it wasn't even a difficult decision.

It was pretty clear. - And by innocent you mean he wasn't there, he had nothing to do with it. - Nothing. - He'd never even been in town. - No mode of no reason, no connection, nothing.

- Never in a million years, but I have predicted that this would be the outcome of this case,

particularly with Kelly Seagler as prosecutor.

“- Oh my God, what happened in Anthony Graves' trial?”

- On an autumn afternoon in the Burlison County, Texas Jail, Anthony Graves was summoned unexpectedly out of his cell. - I was sitting in the rain a letter. They come give me a say, put your shirt on and walk me up to the front of the jail. Nicole Kazuraz and Jimmy Phillips, members of his legal team,

were there to see him with a message he'd waited to hear for 18 years. The murder charges had been dropped. - Both of us could barely talk. We were so emotional, and she says, Anthony, God is great. - And he knew? - And she just said, "You're free man.

You can leave right now. It's only Anthony. It's the thing." - And on October 27th, 2010, the man known as inmate number 999127, got his good name back. Anthony Graves, carrying all of his belongings and looking a little dazed, walked out of jail, and into the warm Texas sun.

- This is probably the dumbest question I've ever asked, but I got to ask you anyway. - Wow, that's the way. - Come on. - How do you-- - Oh, oh. - Well, how are you good? - Yeah, I'll bet you do so. - If you're good, I feel good. 18 years was the long time.

I think I've lost a lot, but today I gave my freedom. - You want to talk to someone here? - Hold on.

- His first call is a free man. It's to his mother.

- Say what you're cooking today. - His mother didn't know that her son was free. - Can you please him, because I'm on my way? - This is your son, and just like, you know, I did not escape. - And his first stop is home to his sons who had grown up without him. - On the long last, to an embrace with his mother.

- When was the last time you were able to put your arm around your mother? - 18 years ago. - 18 years ago. - You haven't touched your son. - No. - 18 years ago. - 18 years ago. - I had no idea. - He is rejoining the world, picking up where he left off.

he finally has places to go and people to see.

- And his lawyers' office graves is able to thank the people who may well have saved his life. The students who got him off death row. But there's someone else in the crowd. For the first time, since graves as trial, he sees Roy Ritter and he'll go his best friend who's testimony did so much to put him away. It happens to the best I was in. But you know, I got him with him.

- What does that mean to you? - For him to take those minute and a half and give me that assurance.

“You know, that's what life is really all about.”

Was it hard to forgive him? - No. No, it wasn't hard at all. He just became another poem in their game of chess. - And into the grave trial. - But Kelly Seagler is not nearly as forgiving. But a news conference she lashed out at Charles Sebesta,

who was once a fellow prosecutor. - I think ultimately it's the prosecutor's responsibility.

Charles Sebesta handled this case in a way that would be best described as a criminal justice system's nightmare. - What are you saying about him? - I'm saying that Charles Sebesta did everything he could, manipulate and witnesses, fabricating evidence, using people, misrepresenting things to the judge and to the jury, to make sure Anthony Graves got convicted of capital murder and put on death row.

Graves' attorneys had filed a complaint against Sebesta, but the Texas State bar dismissed it, and Sebesta insists he did nothing wrong that Seagler was just afraid of losing a big case. - They didn't have an intention of trying this case. Basically they're looking for a way out.

“- Sebesta says you didn't want to take the risk of losing a trial. - Really? - That's what he said.”

- Well, I would say that he's going to have a hard time finding any single other person that would agree that I'm afraid to go to trial on anything. - But Seagler says there was one thing she dreaded about this case telling the victim's family that the man they believed was a murderer for so long is not. - 18 years they believed that the two men responsible for killing their family, their babies, their mom, their sister, got what they deserved. - It could have been different.

- Glenda Rutledge lost her two daughters that August night in 1992. - Some of them are never

going to change their minds. They're always going to think Anthony Graves is a guilty no matter what I say. How do you get upset with them? There is much a victim of what happened as Anthony Graves is. For his own troubles, Anthony Graves should have been paid $1.4 million when he was released.

“That's what the state of Texas figures, 18 years of wrongful imprisonment, is worth.”

But there was a paperwork snafu. His release documents never used the words actual innocence. So Texas refused to pay. - Two words. Two words. They'll hold me hostage. - Two words. Finally, after nine months of public pressure, the legislature passed and the governor was quick to sign a special measure awarding him the money. Graves credited 48 hours mystery for drawing attention to what he was owed. But he had already won the biggest fight of

his life for his life and for his freedom. - You could put your hands out of the terrible walls. - Wow, it was living it, you know. - He can come and go as he pleases as he tries to absorb how far he's come from a previous life he's still struggling to understand. They were trying to kill me. I still came out of my mind around how to hell did I go from home to that road for a crime that happened in another town, but to people I don't even know.

It's this crazy. And I gave 18 years of my life.

Anthony Graves, became chief community liaison for the Harris County Public Defenders Office and advocates for criminal justice reform. In 2015, Charles Sebesto was disbarred for withholding evidence and presenting false testimony in the Graves case. He died in 2026.