Cary Clack on the Anthony Graves Case & Journalism

The San Antonio Express-News columnist writes, "Praising the Fourth Estate," for today's paper.

Most people fortunate enough to find their way into journalism aren't Don (or Doña) Quixotes intent on a futile career of tilting at windmills.

The actual giants dotting landscapes are real problems, real issues and real systems that harm people and their communities.

These are the giants who inspire journalists to be knights-errant - people who seek to right wrongs while telling a story accurately and well.

One of the best journalists in the land, one of the great magazine writers in America, is Pamela Colloff of Texas Monthly. She may have written and may yet write better stories than her October 2010 cover story, "Innocence Lost," but she may never write a more important piece or one that had so swift and positive an impact.

The story is about the outrageous case of Anthony Graves, who in 1994 was convicted and sentenced to die for six horrific murders in the Central Texas town of Somerville. The victims were Bobbie Davis, her teenage daughter and four grandchildren, ages 9, 6, 5 and 4.

The only thing that incriminated Graves was the word of the man who was eventually executed for the murders and who, until his death, insisted that he'd lied about Graves' involvement. In 2006 the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Graves' conviction, and he was removed from death row. A new trial was scheduled for last February in his hometown of Brenham.

To read Colloff's brilliantly reported 14,000 words is to be left with no doubt of Graves' innocence. Brenham's district attorney felt the same way and, within a month of the story's appearance, dropped all charges against Graves.

"Innocence Lost" and Colloff`s January 2011 follow-up, "Innocence Found," made Texas Monthly a finalist in the Public Interest category at Monday night's National Magazine Awards. Although The New Yorker won, Colloff's journalism served the public interest by exposing the incompetence and corruption that came perilously close to killing an innocent man and stole 18 years of his life.

And no award can compare with winning that man his freedom. Graves, for one, is grateful. Now 46, Graves, whose case became an international cause, is touring overseas talking about what happened to him.

Colloff's two Texas Monthly articles are noted at the links.

"Graves should not have to accept an IOU on justice," is the title of a Dallas Morning News editorial from last week.

The absurdity of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott seizing a $250 check due to Anthony Graves underscores the point that the state’s best-known exoneree still has not received justice.

Graves, wrongfully convicted of capital murder in 1994, was released in October after 18 years of incarceration, most of it on death row. A special prosecutor handling a retrial of his case cited fabricated evidence and unethical pressure on witnesses by her predecessor when prosecutors asked a state court to drop all charges. The court readily agreed.

The obvious next step would have been for Graves to receive compensation from the state under the Timothy Cole Compensation Act, which allots $80,000 to wrongfully convicted people for every year of their life taken by the state. Instead, because the court did not use the words “actual innocence” in its release order, Comptroller Susan Combs said the state should not pay. Despite criticism from Gov. Rick Perry — and pretty much everyone else — the comptroller has stood by this decision, which has prompted a lawsuit.

Now, while all of this is going on, an automated system in the Texas attorney general’s office tagged Graves for owing back payments of child support for 1998-2002. Why was he behind? The fact that he was locked up on death row might have had something to do with it. The person most responsible for a lack of support for Graves’ children during that time is former Burleson County District Attorney Charles Sebesta, the man who almost single-handedly forced the Graves case through the courts using lies by the real killer to convict a man with a solid alibi. But we digress.

Graves agreed to have his paychecks garnisheed to pay the child support, but when the state seized an entire check from Prairie View A&M University for a speaking engagement, Graves called foul.

The attorney general’s office shrugged, telling the Houston Chronicle that there was nothing Abbott could do and that the automated system “regularly files wage withholding orders without any involvement from the executive office.” If only payments to exonerees were so automated!

This newspaper has credited Abbott for modernizing the state’s child support collection efforts. That modernization should include the application of basic common sense in a case such as this.

Houston Chronicle journalist Harvey Rice wrote the article, "Freed, but not from his bills: Ex-inmate, like Graves, has been dunned 21 years for child support owed during time he served for crime he didn't commit," for the May 7th paper.

Anthony Graves isn't the only Texan found innocent of capital murder to be billed by state officials for thousands of dollars in child support payments that built up while he was on death row.

The attorney general is seeking more than $4,000 in child support from Graves, but Clarence Brandley, who spent nearly 10 years on death row for a murder he didn't commit, has been paying child support nearly every year since he was released from prison in 1990.

In 30 years on the bench, "… No case has presented a more shocking scenario of the effects of racial prejudice, perjured testimony, witness intimidation (and) an investigation the outcome of which has been predetermined," state District Judge Perry Picket wrote about Brandley's case after a hearing in 1987.

To relieve Graves of the responsibility of child support payments, his attorneys are citing a 2007 law enacted because of Brandley's experience that compels the state to take over payments for time spent in prison by the unjustly convicted.

Brandley testified at the hearings, and his attorney, state Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, introduced the legislation.

Dutton said the law came too late to help Brandley. Graves hasn't benefited because state Comptroller Susan Combs must verify his eligibility, but she says the order dismissing his murder charge didn't contain the legally required wording.

Twenty-one years after being freed from prison, Brandley, 59, is still being billed every month by the attorney general's office for his child support payments.

Brandley's paycheck was garnisheed every month until he lost his job in the economic downturn of 2008. He has since lost his car and house, forcing him to live with relatives. But the child support bills keep coming as the interest mounts. The last bill sought a $260 monthly payment on a balance of $12,683.

"I just tear them up," said Brandley, who has lost nearly everything he owns.

Earlier coverage of Graves' exoneration begins at the link.  All coverage is in the Anthony Graves index.  Related posts are in the journalism and  wrongful incarceration indexes.