Three days before the 11th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty this Saturday October 30 at 2 PM at the Texas Capitol in Austin, an innocent man has been released from Texas Death Row.

From the Houston Chronicle:

           A Texas inmate sentenced to die in 1994 has been released after prosecutors said today the man is innocent.

Anthony Graves was convicted of assisting Robert Earl Carter in the slaying of a grandmother, her daughter and four grandchildren in the Burleson County city of Somerville.

The dismissal comes 10 years after Carter, whose testimony convicted Graves, said in the moments before he was executed: “Anthony Graves had nothing to do with it. … I lied on him in court.”

Washington-Burleson County District Attorney Bill Parham dismissed the case after he and his team investigated the case for five months.

“He’s an innocent man,” Parham said today. “There is nothing that connects Anthony Graves to this crime.”

He said the dismissal was just.

“I did what I did because that’s the right thing to do, and I’m fine with it,” he said.

An attorney for Graves, Jimmy Phillips, Jr. said his client was released about 5:30 p.m.

“The first place he wanted to go is to go hug his mama,” Phillips said. “He is a free man and he’s home.”

Kelly Siegler, a prosecutor hired to re-try Graves, agreed with Parham.

“After months of investigation and talking to every witness who’s ever been involved in this case and people who’ve never been talked to before, after looking under every rock we could find, we found not one piece of credible evidence that links Anthony Graves to the commission of this capital murder,” Siegler said.

“This is not a case where the evidence went south with time or witnesses passed away or we just couldn’t make the case anymore. He is an innocent man.”

In 2006, a three-judge panel from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided Graves deserved a new trial after ruling that prosecutors elicited false statements from two witnesses and withheld two statements that could have changed the minds of jurors.

The victims, Bobbie Davis, 45; her 16-year-old daughter, Nicole; and Davis’ four grandchildren, ages 4 to 9,were shot and stabbed inside Davis’ house, which was set aflame to cover the crime.

Graves had been moved from death row to the Burleson County Jail to await a new trial.

Before his execution, Todd Willingham said,“Please don’t ever stop fighting to vindicate me.” On October 30 at 2 PM, you can join the fight by attending the 11th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty at the Texas Capitol in Austin.

The 11th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty will be held in Austin at the Texas Capitol at 2 PM on October 30, 2010. Contact the march organizers if you would like to volunteer or if your organization would like to be listed as a co-sponsor.

Special guests this year include 6 exonerated former death row prisoners Shujaa Graham, Ron Keine, Gary Drinkard, Curtis McCarty, Albert Burrell and Greg Wilhoit. Curtis spent 21 years in prison – including 19 years on death row – in Oklahoma for a crime he did not commit. Shujaa spent 3 years on death row in California for a crime he did not commit. Ron spent two years on death row in New Mexico for a crime he did not commit. Gary spent almost 6 years on death row in Alabama for a crime he did not commit. Albert spent 13 years on death row in Louisiana for a crime he did not commit. Greg spent five years on death row in Oklahoma for a crime he did not commit.

Also speaking will be Ron Carlson, whose sister Deborah Ruth Carlson Davis Thornton and Jerry Lynn Dean were murdered in Houston with a pick-ax by Karla Faye Tucker and Daniel Ryan Garrett. Ron opposes the death pealty and witnessed Tucker’s execution in Huntsville at her request.

Elizabeth Gilbert will also speak at the 11th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty at 2 PM on October 30th at the Texas Capitol in Austin. She is a Houston teacher and playwright who befriended Texas death row prisoner Todd Willingham. Her story is featured in the New Yorker article by David Grann about the case as well at the Frontline Documentary “Death by Fire” (Click to watch online). Elizabeth actively investigated the case on her own. She became convinced of Todd’s innocence and was instrumental in helping his family find an expert fire investigator to examine his case.

Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner will also speak. Sandrine is a French citizen married to Hank Skinner, who is on Texas death row and is seeking to have DNA tested that could prove his innocence.

On October 13, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Hank Skinner to determine if he may seek testing of DNA evidence through a civil rights lawsuit. If he is not allowed to test the DNA evidence, then Texas may execute an innocent person.

Terri Been will speak about her brother Jeff Wood, who is on death row even though he did not kill anyone. Jeff was convicted under the Texas Law of Parties, which allows people like Jeff Wood and Kenneth Foster, Jr to have been sentenced to death even though they never killed anyone or intended anyone to be killed. Foster received a commutation to life in prison in 2007, but Wood remains on death row.

Delia Perez Meyer, whose brother Louis Castro Perez is on death row, will speak and will invite any family members of people on death row to come to the front of the rally to be acknowledged.

Other speakers will be announced later.

“This is fast becoming one of the biggest anti-death penalty events in the country. I’ll be there“, said death row exoneree Ron Keine.

Each October since 2000, people from all walks of life and all parts of Texas, the U.S. and other countries have taken a day out of their year and gathered in Austin to raise their voices together and loudly express their opposition to the death penalty. The march is a coming together of activists, family members of people on death row, community leaders, exonerated prisoners and all those calling for repeal of the Texas death penalty.

Last year’s march was the largest anti-death penalty rally in Texas since the first ever march in 2000. We will be joined this year by the Journey of Hope, which is an organization led by murder victim family members joined by death row family members, family members of the executed, the exonerated, and others with stories to tell, that conducts public education speaking tours and addresses alternatives to the death penalty.

The annual march is organized as a joint project by several Texas anti-death penalty organizations: Texas Moratorium Network, the Austin chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, Texas Students Against the Death Penalty, Texas Death Penalty Education and Resource Center, Death Penalty Free Austin, and Kids Against the Death Penalty.

A northeast Texas man was set to receive a lethal injection Thursday for the slayings of an elderly couple found brutally beaten and stabbed in their home.

Larry Wooten was condemned to death for the September 1996 killings of 80-year-old Grady Alexander and his 86-year-old wife, Bessie.

The Alexanders were beaten with a cast iron skillet and a pistol, stabbed and had their throats slit and heads almost severed. Prosecutors said Wooten robbed the couple, taking their savings of $500, so he could buy cocaine.

The 51-year-old would be the 17th inmate executed this year in the nation’s most active death penalty state.

Wooten said he didn’t kill the couple, for whom he formerly worked doing odd jobs. He claimed he went to their home in Paris, located about 105 miles northeast of Dallas, found the bodies and fled. Wooten had at one time been married to the couple’s niece.

But DNA evidence, including blood found on the Alexanders’ kitchen floor and matched to Wooten, helped convict him. A pair of Wooten’s pants stained with Grady Alexander’s blood also were found near an area where Wooten had bought drugs around the time of the murders.

“I don’t want to be executed. But Texas is going to do what they’re going to do,” Wooten said in an interview last month.

Wooten’s attorneys said his appeals have been exhausted.

“I don’t anticipate anything more being filed on his behalf,” Robin Norris, Wooten’s appellate attorney, said Thursday.

The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month refused to consider Wooten’s appeal. On Tuesday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected a plea to commute his sentence to life in prison.

Kerye Ashmore, a former Lamar County district attorney who prosecuted the case, called Wooten a “scary guy” with a history of violence, including a prior conviction for assaulting an elderly woman after breaking into her home. He also was a person of interest in the murder of another elderly woman in Paris who was killed a couple of weeks before the Alexanders, Ashmore said.

“If you are going to have a death penalty, this is the kind of people you want to have the death penalty for,” said Ashmore, now the first assistant district attorney in nearby Grayson County.

In his appeal to the Supreme Court, Wooten’s attorneys argued he wouldn’t have turned down a plea bargain if he knew about additional DNA evidence that didn’t become available until after his trial began.

Wooten turned down a plea agreement of life in prison after DNA experts working for his trial attorneys believed the blood evidence didn’t reliably connect him to the crime. But after the trial began, additional lab results showed the DNA evidence was stronger than originally thought, Wooten’s appeals said.

Ashmore said he never misrepresented the strength of the DNA evidence.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in March ruled both sides are at risk in a plea offer and there’s no constitutional right to a plea bargain.

In prior appeals, Wooten had claimed he should not be executed because he is mentally retarded. But his claim was denied as tests put his IQ between 77 and 84. An IQ of 70 is considered the threshold for mental impairment.