“I think he can provide testimony to how, under the grimmest of circumstances, the human soul can still find a way to keep that hope alive,” Barnes said.īy bringing in Graves as part of its UIW Distinguished Speakers Series, sponsored by the UIW College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Barnes continues his lifelong advocacy for abolishing the death penalty. Senate on the harms of solitary confinement, which he endured for 16 of his more than 18 years in prison. Since his release, Graves has established the Anthony Graves Foundation to work for the betterment of the criminal justice system, worked with the American Civil Liberties Union Campaign for Smart Justice, served on the board of directors of the Houston Forensic Science Center, and has testified to the U.S. The issue goes far deeper, to an entire system that could allow such potentially fatal misconduct, he said.
In summarizing his case, Graves said, “you had a District Attorney who knew he had an innocent person and was still trying to kill him.” Infinite Hope: How Wrongful Conviction, Solitary Confinement, and 12 Years on Death Row Failed to Kill My Soul.University of the Incarnate Word Concert Hall.Infinite Hope by Anthony Graves Credit: Courtesy / Author Guest Speaker Anthony Graves author, exonerated death row inmate Not only did the false prosecution had grave consequences for an innocent man, it represented “a criminal justice system’s nightmare,” according to the Houston Chronicle. When evidence exonerating Graves mounted and he was finally freed, Graves’ prosecuting attorney was found guilty of “numerous acts of prosecutorial misconduct,” having manufactured evidence, misled jurors, and elicited false testimony. It was very real, and sickening … all I could hear was a voice saying, Anthony Graves, you have a date with death in Texas.”
He was granted a stay for 10 days, during which, as he writes in Infinite Hope, “the proverbial gun was held directly to my head, but it didn’t feel like a proverb. “Our criminal justice system has now become the biggest criminal in our country, and it’s time we address that issue.” Bettering the SystemĪt one point in 2000, just as two court-appointed attorneys were assigned to his ongoing case, an execution date was set for Graves. “I want the world to know we could do better,” he said. What he knew from Day One in prison, he said, was that he “would come out here and advocate for a better criminal justice system, so there would be no more Anthony Graves,’” he said. “It was surreal, but it was definitely something I was ready to embrace.” He now says that the experience was his greatest challenge and that all other obstacles could be overcome. I was not prepared for it … so much had changed in the world.”įor the first few days, “It was like walking in slow motion,” he said.
He and advocates on his behalf had worked toward his release for years, suffering major setbacks and small successes, “then just like that, they gave me my freedom.
He is now listed as one of the most notorious cases of innocents on death row, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) website.īeing released after his 6,640-day odyssey was an “out-of-body experience,” Graves said Monday in a phone interview from his home in Houston. His new memoir, Infinite Hope: How Wrongful Conviction, Solitary Confinement, and 12 Years on Death Row Failed to Kill My Soul, details his life story from his 1992 arrest through his exoneration in 2010. Graves not only survived his nearly two-decades-long ordeal, but surpassed it by becoming an advocate for criminal justice system reform and an author. “How do you survive an ordeal like that?” Barnes asked rhetorically.
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