KVUE’s Jennie Huerta reported on our delivery of $3,000 in donations we collected from Texas Moratorium Network’s supporters and friends from across Texas, other U.S. states and other countries. Scott Cobb, president of TMN, and friends from Campaign to End the Death Penalty and Witness to Innocence delivered the donations to Anthony on Saturday, November 20. Watch the video on YouTube.
Anthony Graves is grateful for his freedom and a donation from anti-death penalty group the Texas Moratorium Network. The donation is to help him start a new life.“This is about humanity coming forward so I am very grateful for that,” Graves said. “It’s a bigger picture than the check that has been written, so I am very grateful for the show of humanity.”The donation is a token, compared what Graves could receive from the State.He was wrongfully convicted of the 1992 murders of a family of six in the Central Texas town of Sommerville.Graves’ conviction was based solely on testimony from the real killer, Robert Earl Carter, who recanted before he was executed in 2000. Journalism students from The University of St. Thomas in Houston later conducted research that would lead to Graves’ freedom. The State could now give Graves 1.5M dollars for his ordeal.“I was basically kidnapped by the criminal justice system and put on Texas Death Row,” Graves says.Texas executes more inmates than any other state in the nation. It is also the most generous state when it comes to compensating the wrongly convicted. Last year the Texas Legislature increased the amount to 80,000 dollars for each year of wrongful imprisonment. And just this month, the IRS ruled that it will no longer collect income tax on such compensation.“I had an intense 18 years of living because of an injustice, so this one-point-four million is a small number, compared to what I’ve had to give up.”Graves says he won’t give up on getting justice for himself. He is going back to court next week. This time, it is to ask the judge to begin the legal process of getting what the State says he’s due.
As part of his compensation, the State could also give Graves a free, four-year college education. He says he wants to study communication, and become an advocate for others like himself.