Pictured above (I to r) are Anthony Qraves' mother, Dorris Curry, and brother, Arthur Curry, with Innocence investigators Meghan Foley, Maria Narciso and Pearl Cajoles.
When the rain started falling soon after they left the University of St. Thomas campus that day last November, junior communication major Pearl Cajoles was sure that it was an ominous sign.
"Here we were on our way to Death Row, and the sky suddenly turned dark," Cajoles, now a senior, said. "It just added to the tension we were already feeling."
Cajoles and then senior communication major Kristina Cashion were driving the 76 miles from Houston to Livingston, Texas, to interview Death Row inmate Anthony Graves for the Innocence Project, an investigative journalism class that has heen offered at UST every fall since 2001.
This journey was just one of many road trips the students and communication professor Nicole Casarez would take the following year to investigate Graves' case as part of her class. The trips took them to Austin and New Orleans and to towns so small that it was hard to find them on any Texas map. The students experienced the reality and weighty dichotomy between unparalleled Southern hospitality and self-imposed segregation that no sociology or history book could ever truly impart.
The investigation became a journey that would change the students and teach them more than they ever expected.
THE NETWORK
The University of Houston Law Center Texas Innocence Network, through which the UST Innocence Project was created and operates, is part of a national network of law and journalism schools that investigate prison inmates' claims of actual innocence.
Casarez, with the help of UH Innocence Network Director David Dow and UST Office of Volunteer Opportunities Director Ellie Collier, started the UST Project three years ago.
Each year thousands of inmates contact the Innocence Network for help. Most of the cases are discarded after preliminary investigations determine that no new evidence exists to support their claims. Other cases are terminated because of legal technicalities.
"We had a case of man serving life in prison for murder in another state; he had evidence of innocence but had exhausted all his appeals," said graduate student Gia Gustilo. "Any investigation we did on his behalf would be legally useless. Realistically, in that case there is not much chance that we can make a difference. It's painful."
THE ANTHONY GRAVES CASE
When Karen Hamilton, deputy director of the UH Law Center's Texas Innocence Network,contacted Casarez soon after school started in the fall of 2002, she said she had a high profile case that she wanted the UST students to investigate right away.
Graves' final appeal was quickly approaching, and Hamilton said she thought the case had a great deal of merit. If there was any new evidence to prove his innocence, the students had to find it and soon.
The Graves' case consumed the students from the beginning. In August 1992, Graves then 29, and Robert Carter, a 24-year-old prison guard, were implicated and later convicted of the murders of six people in Somerville, Texas, a town the Houston Chronicle described as a small "one-stoplight railroad town...of 1,500, where everyone knows each other."
Graves' cousin, Theresa "Cookie" Carter, Carter's wife, was also arrested and held for several months on the same charges, but later released because of lack of evidence. Graves was convicted on Carter's testimony and corroborating testimony from jailhouse informants who claimed that Graves made incriminating statements.
However, according to court documents and affidavits obtained by the students, Carter recanted his testimony against Graves to several people, including the district attorney, before and after Graves' trial.
Two weeks after giving a taped deposition recanting his testimony of Graves' involvement, Carter was executed by lethal injection. At his execution, Carter restated Graves' innocence.
"It was me and me alone," Carter said. "Anthony Graves had nothing to do with it."
In the beginning of the investigation, the group members were naturally skeptical. However, the more the group investigated, the more it became evident that Graves' trial was a serious miscarriage of justice, said Meghan S. Foley, who continues to volunteer on the Graves investigation although she graduated in May.
"It took a while to convince us, but the evidence was strong," said alumnus Michael Bingham, who took the class the first semester it was offered and continues to volunteer with the Project.
Graves' main alibi witness, his then 19-year-old girlfriend, told the group in an interview that she did not testify because the district attorney warned the court she would be considered a suspect in the murders if she testified for Graves. The students located a man in a Teague, Texas, prison who testified at Graves' trial that he overheard Graves make an incriminating statement while awaiting trial. The prisoner told the students he believes that he received a reduced sentence for his testimony although he is a habitual offender.
He signed an affidavit that he was highly medicated for psychological disorders at the time and unsure of his original testimony. He said he never meant to implicate Graves in his testimony and he believes Graves is innocent.
"They don't have any testimony putting [Graves] there. They don't have a confession. They don't have anything. This case is unreliable," said one of Graves' appellate attorneys Roy Greenwood.
As the semester ended, the group's dedication has not waned as every piece of evidence, every new interview, lends support to the possibility that an innocent man is on death row. "From the beginning I looked Graves in the eye and never stopped [looking]," wrote Kristina Cashion, in a piece for the Cauldron, the University's student newspaper. "I wanted to see if I could get some gut feeling about his innocence or guilt. Instead I saw him not as a case or a monster but as a well-spoken, articulate and likeable man."
Casarez and the students spent hours digging through old records, reading trial transcripts, and trying to locate old or new witnesses. The group went to great lengths to obtain interviews-sometimes by parking themselves in front of houses for hours on weekends, even if that meant getting their cars stuck in the mud on old country roads.
"It's been an adventure," said Chester Soria, a UST sophomore who recently began working on the case and plans to take the class this fall.
"The Innocence Network lets you step into the real world," said now junior communication major Maria Narciso. "We are constantly relying on the skills we learned in our news writing and reporting classes. It's been ten years but still people have a hard time talking about Graves. Some refused to talk to us at all."
THE LESSONS
In early April, Casarez and four student team members traveled to New Orleans to see Graves' case argued before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The students said they thought the judges appeared interested in the case because they asked insightful questions regarding Graves' claim of innocence. As of press time for this article, the Court's decision had not been released.
Although the class technically ended in December, most of the students continue to investigate Graves' case on a volunteer basis. Each student admits that the class has changed their lives.
"I came to UST from a community college. All college was to me before was going to class, getting the grades then going home," Cajoles said. "I think the most important thing that this class has taught me is as a journalist I can make a difference."
Meghan S. Foley is a UST graduate, class of 2003.
Qia L. Qustilo, an MLA student at St. Thomas, is a UST graduate, class of 2001.