Grave Injustice

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2:19This 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.

2:33The thing about this case that'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 asleep in their bed, a 16-year-old asleep 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. There were 66 stab wounds. 66, 66. Minimum of 66, by the way.

3:18Those are the ones that they counted. Those were living people. Those were 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. Total tunnel vision. Anthony Graves was convicted of being an accomplice. 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.

4:00Nicole and her students played a really pivotal role in this. What did you see yourself as being up against? We're Texas. 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 convicting people who are 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?

4:43This was such a horrific event in that town and continues to be an event that really haunts 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. Reporter Pam Koloff is still moved by the fact that the family never had a chance. There was Bobby Davis, the grandmother to the four children, who was bludgeoned and then stabbed to death.

5:34There 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 9-year-old Denitra, 6-year-old Brittany, 5-year-old Lee Aaron, and 4-year-old Jason. My daughters were exotically beautiful. Glenda Rutledge was Lee Aaron and Brittany's mother. They were my legacy, and I was so looking forward to the chance to get it right. To raise 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 I, you know, who we adored, who was the center of our life.

6:37He was convinced it was a random crime. I just couldn't imagine someone from that area harming anyone in my family because we had never, we didn't have any enemies, we hadn't been in any trouble.

6:52Roy 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 would always come on. And it was early in the morning, and they came up and they said, you know, arrest had been made, and they said, Anthony Charles Graves, age 27. 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 that Graves had even been in Ritter's wedding party. It just freaked me out, but my immediate thing was, yeah, right, no way, and what could possibly be going on here?

7:37You didn't believe it? Well, of course not. Absolutely not. Ritter knew Anthony Graves as a gentleman, 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. You're charged with the offense of capital murder. Who? Capital murder? Me? Roy was so sure of his best friend's 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.

8:31There'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. and investigators 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.

9:13And 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. And investigators believe Carter went there to kill Jason. He very clearly wanted his four-year-old son dead. 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.

9:56There was a gun, 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 and 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 was his wife's first cousin. Within hours, Anthony Graves had been arrested and taken to the police station.

10:35He took a lie detector test and failed. Man, this is a big mistake. Capital murder. I've never even shot a gun in my life. I'm a dream of the world, 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 him to carry a knife. I said, I gave Anthony a knife one time.

11:20In Somerville, Texas, nothing moves very swiftly, except for the occasional freight train and sometimes the desire for justice. Emotions were running so high in Somerville leading up to these trials that the mayor at the time said that people in the community didn't even want to bother, that they wanted to, quote, 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 a horror movie they said i did it and did you no would never do anything like that i'm not a violent person at all it was just crazy grave said he knew robert carter only in passing and didn't know the victims at all in fact there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime i'm like whatever's going on is going to be cleared up because i haven't done anything wrong But authorities only focused more on Graves.

12:30He had said he 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 have one that's exactly like it. And they asked me if I still had that knife, and I said, yeah. 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, well, would you mind if we examined it? And 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.

13:16So Ritter was stunned when those test results came back. The blade fit inside the skull cap perfectly. So all of these folks from the DA's office told you that your 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 didn't want to believe it. Because if that was true, my friend was a murderer. Right? And his friend Anthony Graves' murder trial began in October 1994. District Attorney Charles Sebesta's star witness was Robert Carter. I would have hated to have had to have gone to the jury without Carter's testimony.

14:05But 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 can 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 lied. He lied. He said I did a crime with him. 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.

14:58I mean, it was a very bad position to be put in. I was very torn, you know, conflicted about it. But they said it fit perfectly. How did his testimony feel to you as opposed to the other testimony? Like betrayal. Like betrayal. Because he knows me. This man knew me. Knew my family. Knew my kids. And there were more damaging witnesses waiting to testify against Graves. Sebesta 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've got to do, that in itself, that's significant.

15:58That's very admissible. I probably could have done with one or two. In a capital murder case, you want as much as you can. We had five. it. Sebestia may have had corroborating witnesses, but Anthony had alibi witnesses. Where were you that night? I was in my mother's apartment 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 night. Never. He never, ever left. And never is never. He never left the house that night. Anthony's girlfriend, another alibi witness, was set to take the stand as well.

16:41But 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 this 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 to me at the time. And the jury agreed. Anthony Graves was convicted of six counts of capital murder. The sentence, death. This is crazy. I go from my home where I'm supposed to be safe, feel safe, and then I'm going to death row for something I didn't even do. But as it turns out, the jury might not have heard everything.

17:30They did not know that there was a critical piece of evidence missing.

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19:18I'm not a violent person. I'm not a bad person. I respect people. I carry myself in a dignified manner. Why me? Out of 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, my mom. 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.

20:19I couldn't see a light at the end of the tunnel. And just to even fathom 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 Cazarez's 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?

21:03Yeah, 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, 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.

21:55It 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.

22:40This is Robert Carter in a 1997 statement. In it, he says he told Sebesta the same thing. In fact, he swears he said that to Sebesta just hours before he took the stand in Graves' trial.

23:01But Sebesta 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 defense lawyers say Sebesta never told them that Carter had just recanted, as Sebesta was required to do by law. Imagine that you're Anthony's attorney and you are facing Robert Carter on cross-examination. How meaningful would it have been for you to be able to say, Mr. Carter, isn't it true that just five minutes ago you said Anthony Graves had nothing to do with this? What would Robert Carter have said?

23:42would he have cracked? Would he have taken back his testimony? We'll never know. Sebesta has long insisted he told the defense what Carter said. His response was that, what is that, is eighth or ninth story? But Graves' attorney denies that. While the lawyers spent years arguing before appellate courts about what Sebesta 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 would have a list of people and places that we were going to go. And the amateur investigators were uncovering troubling evidence.

24:29Especially about those jailhouse witnesses who Sebesta 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. Maybe this intercom system wasn't all that fantastic. You know, 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 in was working.

25:10How do you know that? Because I was told this by 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 Sebesta said in 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, as sort of a coy ploy, if you will, to scare away a woman who could very well alibi your defendant.

26:00Had 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 Cazarez 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.

26:54I cried. I pumped my fist and I was like, yes, God is good. Yes, I knew it is. My case was overturned. Somebody seen the truth. District Attorney's Office. The court's skewer, Charles Sebesta, called his behavior egregious for, among other things, intentionally withholding evidence that could have helped Graves, most notably that Carter had recanted right before he testified. Anthony Graves did not have any further murders and was not free. 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.

27:46And 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, Catherine Scardino and Jimmy Phillips, assisted by Nicole Cazarez. We don't know what we'd do without her. I mean, she's like our Graves encyclopedia. The lawyers will have to be on their toes because this is their opponent. Like you're mad, like you're a friend, like you can't stop. Kelly Siegler, widely regarded as the toughest prosecutor in Texas, What does that say about David Tim? has been appointed to handle the Graves case. Have you ever lost a capital case?

28:28A death penalty case? Yeah. No.