This is not a big surprise. Some prosecutors only care about getting the conviction.
Death-row inmate may get a new trial
Graves deprived of key evidence, appeals court says
By HARVEY RICE
Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle
Prosecutors withheld two statements that could have changed the minds of jurors who convicted Anthony Graves of killing a woman and five children in Burleson County 12 years ago, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
The ruling by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a decision by a Galveston federal judge and ordered a new trial for Graves, 40, who has been on death row since his conviction.
The appeals court said in a 22-page opinion that the withheld statements could have discredited testimony by the state's key witness, Robert Carter, who was executed for the slayings.
Although Carter's testimony convicted Graves, he proclaimed Graves' innocence moments before his execution.
The appeals court said that Charles Sebesta, then district attorney for Burleson and Washington counties, failed to tell Graves' lawyers that the night before the trial, Carter said: "I did it all myself, Mr. Sebesta. I did it all myself."
Sebesta also failed to disclose that Carter had implicated his wife, Theresa, as an accomplice in the slayings of Bobbie Joyce Davis, 45; her 16-year-old daughter, Nicole; and four grandchildren between 4 and 9 years old.
They were shot, stabbed and beaten to death Aug. 18, 1992, and their house doused with gasoline and burned to cover the crime.
"If the two statements had been revealed, the defense's approach could have been much different and probably highly effective," Circuit Judge W. Eugene Davis wrote in the unanimous opinion for judges Jacques L. Wiener, Jr. and Emilio M. Garza.
The appeals court decision overturns a recommendation by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Froeschner that was adopted by U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent.
That opinion said that Sebesta had erred by withholding the statements, but that the two statements would not have changed the guilty verdict.
'Stupendously shocked'
Graves' attorneys acknowledged that it may be some time before he gets a new trial.
The decision means that the Texas Attorney General's Office has 180 days to appeal the decision or schedule a new trial. Attorney General's Office spokesman Tom Kelley said the office had not yet reviewed the opinion.
Sebesta declined to comment. "I really need to take a look at it and see what they said," he said.
The former district attorney has never wavered in his belief that Graves is guilty.
One of Graves' attorneys, Roy Greenwood, said the state's chances of getting a rehearing were slim because of the quality of the opinion.
"This one is tight and fact-filled and there are not any questions of new law," Greenwood said."I wouldn't think in a million years they would review that."
"I am stupendously shocked," said Graves' other attorney, Jay Burnett. "We thought our last ditch effort would be in the Supreme Court of the United States."
Greenwood said that prison rules prevented him from speaking with Graves by phone late Friday, but that a prison official had promised to relay the information to him.
Mother 'overwhelmed'
Graves' mother, Doris Curry, 58, said, "I'm so overwhelmed. I just don't know. It's making my life so much better."
Curry said she had dreamed the night before that her son was about to be executed, but "the doctors walked away and wouldn't do it. That was my sign."
Students from professor Nicole Casarez's journalism class were celebrating the news in her office at the University of St. Thomas with a bottle of champagne. The students, participating in the University of Houston's Innocence Network, had amassed new information in the the last three years they say shows Graves is innocent.
Burnett said the state could ask for an en banc hearing, which is a hearing by the full 5th Circuit. If they failed there, they could go to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"The bottom line celebration will be when it gets to state district court and they say we're not going to retry this case and it's dismissed," Greenwood said. "That's the true victory."
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Prosecutorial career-padding, lying witnesses, and racism are reasons the death penalty should be abolished. Too many innocents get murdered by the state from bad law and bad forensics and bad prosecutors. The death penalty could be acceptable if the deicsions were perfectly accurate (only the gulity get executed).
...
Of course, that murdering bas couldn't have been lying in the death chamber, could he?
Define "too many" and then name them.
What was his alibi and has anyone corroborated the death chamber confession? Was there other physical evidence tying him to the murder? Was he placed at the scene?
Well, the Innocence Project has exonerated over 170 prisoners who were wrongly convicted. They aren't all capital convictions but it is pretty interesting stuff.Define "too many" and then name them.
Here's a breakdown of the factors that caused the wrongful convictions of the first 130 cases where they exonerated the convicted:
3 DNA Inclusions at Time of Trial
35 False Confessions
21 Informants / Snitches
21 Microscopic Hair Comparison Matches
101 Mistaken I.D.
This is just one organization working since 1992 that only works in cases where DNA can be used to exonerate. They have some detailed case histories if you really care to know the names.
I'd think the possibility of an execution of one innocent person would be one "too many," but then again, I have a conscience.
How many murderers have they "exonerated?" And, still, I'd like some names...so we can review the cases.
I guess you have the case files at your desk?
Well, that would depend on the names.
Can you be more specific?
v. Maryland (1963) 373 U.S. 83.
wasn't it Repug/red-state Ohio or Illinois whose governor stopped all executions last year because they kept finding death row inmates who were found to be not guilty?
Of course, Texas is US National Executions Champion, and dumb dubya vows that every single one killed in TX when he was acting like a governor was guilty, no possibility of mistakes.
Eight years later, the Texas Bar Ass'n may actually do something about Sebesta:
http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/an...er-his-actionsIt’s been eight years since the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the DA who prosecuted Anthony Graves for capital murder had done something unconscionable : withheld favorable evidence and used false testimony to secure a conviction—a conviction that sent Graves to death row.
Since that federal ruling came down in 2006, granting Graves a retrial, many good things have happened: Anthony was freed from prison in 2010, after all charges against him were dropped; he was formally exonerated by the State of Texas; and he received $1.4 million in compensation for the eighteen years he spent in prison for a crime he did not commit. But the man who secured his 1994 conviction—former Burleson County DA Charles Sebesta— never faced any consequences. The state bar took no action against him. Even when he continued to impugn Graves’ character, telling Texas newspapers as recently as this January that Graves was guilty of murder, he did so with impunity.
Finally, last week—twenty years after Graves’ wrongful conviction—the bar took a small but significant step toward ensuring that Sebesta would have to answer for his actions. The bar’s chief disciplinary counsel determined that there was “just cause” to believe that the former prosecutor had engaged in misconduct in Graves’ case.
"bar’s chief disciplinary counsel determined that there was “just cause” to believe that the former prosecutor had engaged in misconduct"
talk, no action, probably never any action.
probably not, but we'll see.
professionals almost NEVER go after their own, doctors, lawyers, nurses, etc.
In quickly looking at the Texas Rules of Disciplinary Procedure, it sounds a whole lot like a grievance has been filed against Sebesta and the finding of Just Cause is, in this instance, the predicate for escalating the proceedings against Sebesta.
The Texas Monthly piece suggests that Sebesta has opted to have the Complaint heard by the grievance committee rather than through a trial in a state district court.
Those proceedings can either result in exoneration or in some sort of sanction up to and including disbarment.
I will say that my favorite part of the revival of this thread -- aside from the potential that what appears to have been an indefensible act by a prosecutor might actually be punished -- is seeing the assumptions of guilt in Yonivore's original response being wholly negated by the fact that Mr. Graves was eventually exonerated.
boutons after nurses now
Is PussyEater still posting under a different name?
nm
goddam boutons, the hate that holds us all together.
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