Anthony Graves

Released from death row after 16 years

Compiled from various sources
published: 4WardEver UK – December 2011
Any news updates on this case will be listed at the foot of this item

Anthony Graves was released from a Texas prison on 27th October 2010 after Washington-Burleson County District Attorney Bill Parham filed a motion to dismiss all charges that had resulted in Graves being sent to death row 16 years previously.

Graves was convicted in 1994 of assisting Robert Carter (RC) in multiple murders in 1992. There was no physical evidence linking Graves to the crime, and his conviction relied primarily on Carter’s testimony that Graves was his accomplice. Two weeks before Carter was scheduled to be executed in 2000, he provided a statement saying he lied about Graves’s involvement in the crime. He repeated that statement minutes before his execution.

Anthony was arrested for the murders of six people and burning their house down to cover up the crime. He said; “I had returned home that day to find the police waiting for me and without being told what I was being charged with I was taken to the police station. I asked at my house and in the police car, but was told that I would be fully informed at the police station.

“On my arrival to the police station I was charged with the murders. When I asked why they thought I did it, they said that RC had told them that I was with him and helped him murder these people.

“I didn’t know who they were talking about. I didn’t know anyone by that name. They took me to a holding cell and when they closed the door and I looked into the cell across from me, there he was. This man was married to my cousin, but he didn’t know me. I had met him, but I didn’t know him. I asked him why he had done this to me and he motioned for me to be quiet, pointing to a speaker in the cell. I told him that I didn’t care, that I hadn’t done anything wrong.

“I was interrogated for hours and continued to plead my innocence. One of the officers said that he could already see the needle going into my arm and that is when I realized that these people wanted to kill me. I kept telling them that I didn’t know anything about it, but they kept telling me that I did and trying to get me to say something that was not true”.

“Three weeks there was a grand jury hearing. RC voluntarily went to speak to them against his attorney’s advice and told them that he had lied and that I was innocent. He told them that he had made the whole thing up because he was scared. His wife had been arrested with him and was also charged in the crime. Five of the victims had been stabbed and beaten and one was shot, so they suspected that more than one person was involved”.

Anthony waited over two years for his trial to start. RC’s trial was first in the early part of 1994. He was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to die by lethal injection.

On 20th October 1994 Anthony’s trial began. RC was brought in as a witness for the prosecution and he testified against Anthony, giving a whole new story than the original testimony. It was revealed in court that a deal was made that if RC testified against Anthony the authorities would not charge his wife (also implicated in the crime) and that if the charges against him were reversed, they would not seek the death penalty against him again.

RC’s step-daughter, (Anthony’s cousin’s daughter) testified that RC didn’t even know Anthony and that he had not been to their house since they had been married. One of RC’s neighbours testified that he had never seen Anthony around RC’s house and had never seen them together.

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