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Gary Graham (Shaka Sankofa)
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Convicted murderer
Gary Graham was executed Thursday evening as a
crowd outside the
Texas death house kept vigil through almost 3
hours of delays.
Texas prison officials
said Graham, who attracted national media
attention and intensified
debate about the death penalty with his claims
of innocence, was
pronounced dead at 8:49 p.m. Thursday. He was the 23rd
inmate executed
in Texas this year.
"We had a long,
rambling and angry final statement from Mr. Graham," said
Mike Graczyk of
the Associated Press, who witnessed the execution. "It
was very obvious
from the way he looked that he had put up a struggle."
He said the prisoner
maintained his innocence to the end with some of his
final words: "Gary
Graham is being murdered today. ... The truth will
come out."
Bobby Hanners, grandson
of murder victim Bobby Lambert, said in a
statement read
by prison officials: "My heart goes out to the Graham
family as they
begin the grieving process. I also pray that Gary Graham
has made peace
with God, but I truly feel that justice has been served."
Somber witnesses
filed out of the red-brick Walls Unit where the
execution took
place shortly before 9 p.m.
Gov. George W. Bush
said he was confident that "justice is being done"
shortly before
media witnesses marched into the death house to observe
the execution.
Several last-minute
appeals delayed the execution of Gary Graham before
his lawyers decided
not to make another appeal to the U.S. 5th Circuit
Court of Appeals
in New Orleans.
In a news conference
in Austin about 8 p.m., the governor said Graham's
case had been reviewed
more than 20 times and that 33 judges had found
his numerous claims
to be without merit.
"After considering
all the facts, I am confident justice is being done,"
Bush said. "May
God bless the victims, the families of the victims, and
may God bless Mr.
Graham."
The final appeal
to a federal judge in Austin was rejected about 7:30
p.m., according
to CNN.
The appeal in Austin
argued that the Texas clemency process is
unconstitutional,
Graham attorney Jack Zimmerman told the Associated
Press.
The state court
and the Supreme Court had previously rejected Graham's
arguments that
he was convicted on shaky evidence from a single
eyewitness and
that his trial lawyer did a poor job. The Supreme Court
voted 5-4 to deny
his latest appeal earlier Thursday.
The last-minute
legal moves delayed Graham's execution, originally
scheduled for 6
p.m.
About 200 law enforcement
authorities, some wearing riot helmets behind
barricades, were
on duty to maintain order at the Huntsville death-row
facility.
Some of the crowd
who supported Graham held upside-down American flags as
a sign of distress.
One flag was burned by a protester and others broke
through a line
of barricades, where they were taken into custody by
authorities.
Earlier Thursday,
the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles had refused to
stop the execution.
Graham's attorneys
had filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court,
asking the justices
to review the case of a man "convicted and sentenced
to death for a
crime he did not commit."
The appeal was turned down by the court.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals also turned down a last-minute appeal.
Under Texas law,
Mr. Bush could not independently change a death sentence
or grant a delay
in the execution.
Gov. Ann Richards
previously granted Mr. Graham a 30-day reprieve, but
only one such delay
is allowed to death row inmates under Texas law.
The pardons board
took three votes. It voted 14-3 against postponing the
execution, 12-5
against reducing Mr. Graham's punishment to a life
sentence, and 17-0
against granting him a conditional pardon. (One of the
board's 18 members
was on leave and did not vote.)
Gerald Garrett,
chairman of the board, issued a written statement and
declined to comment
further.
"The members of
the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles are fully aware
of the responsibility
we have in rendering our votes as part of the
executive clemency
review process," the statement said. "I can say,
unequivocally,
that the Board's decision not to recommend clemency was
reached after a
complete and unbiased review of the petition and evidence
submitted."
As the vote was
announced, the tenor rose among protesters gathered
around the Huntsville
Unit, where the execution was to take place.
The Board of Pardons
and Paroles generally votes by fax from offices
around the state.
As the hour of decision
in Mr. Graham's case approached, the climate was
anxious but nonviolent
around the prison, with none of the disorder about
which local officials
had expressed concern.
The tension was
foreshadowed the night before on death row, where Mr.
Graham physically
resisted when officials took steps to move him from the
Terrell Unit in
Livingston to the Huntsville Unit, a prison spokesman
said.
"As he was being
escorted, as he normally would be, back to his cell
area, that's when
we informed him that we were indeed going to take him
directly to Huntsville,"
prison spokesman Larry Fitzgerald said.
Mr. Graham wordlessly
refused, making it necessary for 5 guards to be
used to shackle
him hand and foot.
While such restraints
are standard for death row transfers, an
extraordinary caravan
of police and helicopter escorts accompanied the
van that carried
Mr. Graham 40 miles to Huntsville, where he arrived
about 6 p.m. CDT
Wednesday.
Mr. Graham, 36,
whose case has been reviewed about three dozen times by
the courts, says
he was wrongly convicted of the 1981 shooting death and
robbery of Bobby
Grant Lambert, 53, of Tucson, Ariz., outside a Houston
supermarket.
While prosecutors
and state officials stand by the lone eyewitness who
identified Mr.
Graham, his lawyers have offered two witnesses who now say
he was not the
killer. Mr. Graham, then 17, was arrested while sleeping
naked in the bed
of a 57-year-old taxi driver whom he had abducted and
raped during an
admitted weeklong crime spree.
Witness Bernadine
Skillern said last week in Houston that she had no
doubt that Graham
was guilty. Ms. Skillern said she saw the killing
through the front
window of her car, which was about a car's length from
the two men.
"I saw Mr. Graham
shoot and kill Mr. Bobby Lambert on that parking lot in
1981," said Ms.
Skillern, 53. "That has not changed. It's not going to
change."
A lawyer for Mr. Graham said he doesn't question Ms. Skillern's honesty.
"She's sincere,
but mistaken," said defense attorney Jack B. Zimmerman.
"We didn't expect
her to say 'I'm sorry, I was mistaken.'"
A national campaign
for a new hearing in his case reached new fervor in
recent weeks, with
celebrities and activists worldwide calling upon Mr.
Bush, the presumptive
Republican nominee, to issue a reprieve.
Mr. Graham has refused
all meals since breakfast Wednesday, a prison
spokesman said.
"He didn't want
to eat on the table of those who would kill him," said
the Rev. Jesse
Jackson, who visited Mr. Graham Thursday and remarked on
his calmness.
"There were no tears
shed," Mr. Jackson said. "He showed amazing
strength."
Officials refused
to discuss other security measures taken in preparation
for the crowds
of media and the public expected Thursday, but they shut
down most of the
normally public areas in and around the main prison
administration
building next to the Huntsville Unit, which is known by
its nickname, The
Walls.
Law enforcement
agencies, including local police and sheriff's deputies,
the FBI and Texas
Rangers were on hand to ensure order.
With Mr. Graham
calling for civil disobedience and the New Black Panthers
Party having staged
a recent armed protest in Houston, townspeople in
Huntsville expressed
concern about violence. Numerous businesses near
the prison shut
their doors early Thursday.
About 11 a.m. spokesmen
for the prison system announced that the
scheduled noon
release of the parole and pardon board's recommendation
had been pushed
back to 1:30 p.m. They also declared that no armed
protesters would
be allowed near the prison.
At 11:15, Mr. Graham's
mother, Elnora Graham, entered the prison along
with the Rev. Jesse
Jackson and anti-death-penalty activist Bianca
Jagger to visit
Mr. Graham.
At 11:30, 6 uniformed
New Black Panther party members - not visibly
armed - entered
the prison area. Beginning at the zone reserved for
groups opposed
to Mr. Graham's execution, they marched to the other
protest zone, an
empty area designated for pro-death penalty groups,
including an expected
contingent from the Ku Klux Klan.
The Klan was not
there, and the Black Panther group was turned back
without incident
to the pro-Graham area, where a growing circle of
pickets chanted
their opposition to the execution.
At 12:15, Mr. Graham's
mother left the prison with Ms. Jagger and Mr.
Jackson, who has
been listed by Mr. Graham as an execution witness.
"If he must die,
he won't be alone," Mr. Jackson said.
********************
Protesters burned
American flags, chanted and waved signs Thursday
outside the prison
in Huntsville to speak out against the execution of
Gary Graham, but
a restless peace prevailed.
After a day of vocal
protests and cries of "No justice! No peace!" the
tension briefly
boiled over for some demonstrators, who rushed a police
barricade shortly
before the execution was scheduled to take place. The
incident ended
quickly, with 6 people arrested by officers in riot
gear.
Graham, convicted
of killing 53-year-old Bobby Lambert during an armed
robbery outside
a Houston supermarket on May 13, 1981, focused national
attention on capital
punishment and the presidential candidacy of
Republican Gov.
George W. Bush.
Of the hundreds
of people who gathered outside the prison, by far the
most vocal and
visible were Graham's supporters, who are numerous because
of his active media
presence throughout his years on death row. Graham
maintained his
innocence and claimed he was convicted on shaky evidence
from a lone eyewitness.
When word came that
the state parole board denied Graham a reprieve,
supporter Ashanti
Chimuranga called the crowd with a bullhorn:
"Brothers and sisters,
we need to come together for this."
She announced the
board's denial, producing shouts of "Murderers!
Murderers! Bush
is a murderer!" against a back beat of throbbing drums.
A woman who claimed
to be Graham's daughter sobbed in the arms of a
friend. While she
cried, another protester with a microphone reminded the
crowds of the Los
Angeles riots that followed the acquittal of the police
officers who beat
motorist Rodney King.
"This raises the
specter of Los Angeles in 1992," Houston activist Travis
Morales shouted.
"We must execute the slave master, not the slaves."
Prison authorities
took no chances, corralling Graham opponents and
supporters on separate
ends of the imposing brick prison. At one point,
around 100 Graham
supporters attempted to confront about 20 Ku Klux
Klansmen demonstrating
in favor of the execution, but the police
presence made it
impossible.
The protesters also
marched also out of the prison area and into the
streets of downtown
Huntsville, chanting "Free Shaka Sankofa!" Graham
adopted that name
to reflect his African heritage.
***************
Gary Graham execution
chronology
Major events in
the case of Gary Graham, who was executed Thursday for
the 1981 murder
of Bobby Lambert during a robbery outside a Houston
grocery store:
May 13, 1981: Lambert,
a 53-year-old man from Tucson, Ariz., is shot
and killed in a
Safeway parking lot by a black man wearing a white
jacket. The only
eyewitness is a woman sitting in her car nearby.
May 20, 1981: Graham
arrested after a violent weeklong crime spree,
which ended with
the abduction and rape of a 57-year-old cab driver. A
total of 22 crimes
eventually are traced to the 17-year-old high school
dropout.
Oct. 30, 1981:
Graham sentenced to death for the Lambert killing.
Without physical
evidence, the prosecution relies mostly on testimony
from witness Bernadine
Skillern. Courthouse bailiff quotes Graham
afterward as saying,
"Next time I'm not going to leave any witnesses."
Jan. 6, 1982: Graham
pleads guilty to 10 cases of aggravated robbery and
is sentenced to
2 concurrent 20-year terms.
June 12, 1984:
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirms the
conviction and
condemnation, the 1st of more than 3 dozen reviews
of his case.
Feb. 9, 1988: Judge
rules that alibi witnesses who came forward after
trial are not credible.
Graham continues to publicly deny killing
Lambert.
April 9, 1993:
In one of the 1st major public shows of support for
Graham, a high-profile
group of capital punishment opponents characterize
the Texas justice
system as racist and vengeful. They support Graham's
innocence claim.
April 28, 1993:
Gov. Ann Richards grants Graham a 1-time, 30-day stay
a day before his
scheduled execution. The action comes 2 days after the
Texas Board of
Pardons and Paroles votes not to recommend clemency.
May 1, 2000: U.S.
Supreme Court turns down Graham's latest appeal,
clearing the way
for Harris County to request a death date.
May 4, 2000: Judge sets June 22 execution date.
May 23, 2000: Graham
supporters announce plans for 30 days of protests,
culminating with
a large gathering outside the Texas death chamber in
Huntsville on the
execution date.
June 15, 2000:
After years of silence, Skillern holds a news conference
to reaffirm her
testimony that Graham killed Lambert.
June 19, 2000:
More than a dozen people demonstrating against capital
punishment are
arrested outside of the Governor's Mansion in Austin.
June 21, 2000:
Corrections officers at death row in Livingston use force
to subdue Graham
and transfer him to a cell near the death chamber at the
Huntsville Unit.
June 22, 2000:
Graham pronounced dead by lethal injection at 8:49 p.m.
CDT after the state
parole board votes not to recommend clemency and
courts reject final
appeals, which delayed the execution by more than 2
hours. Graham fights
with guards to the end and again denies killing
Lambert.
(source: Dallas Morning News)
Opposition to the death
penalty is unanimous among European governments,
and the issue is increasingly
one on which Europe has asserted its
independence from America.
Because Europeans feel they share so many
values with the United
States, they are even more perplexed that it
won't abandon capital
punishment.
"It does not fit: The
United States presents itself on the one hand as
the world police defending
human rights, and on the other side it
carries out the death
penalty," said German lawmaker Sabine
Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger.
She called on the German
government to "make this detestable topic
the object of discussions
with our American friends."
European anti-death penalty
activists are pinning hopes for change in
America on the presidential
campaign that has made capital punishment a
national debate. In the
wake of the Graham case, presumptive GOP nominee
and Texas Gov. George
W. Bush was taking the brunt of their attacks.
Italy's Communist newspaper
Il Manifesto took a direct swipe at Bush,
featuring a photo covering
1/3 of the front-page under the headline:
"The executioner doesn't
let up." The head of Italy's Democratic Left
party, Walter Veltroni,
called Bush "cold and bureaucratic" after the
governor commented that
"justice was done."
The outrage was amplified
by a study published last week by Columbia
University that found
2/3 of all death penalty appeals from 1973-95
were successful. The
study's authors said that fact indicates serious
flaws in the capital
punishment system.
"It is an important step
that this knowledge can't be set aside anymore
not even in Republican
circles,'' said Sina Vogt, a spokeswoman in
Germany for the European
Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "We
think it is absolutely
necessary that Bush joins his colleague in
Illinois in a moratorium
on the death penalty while the system is
reviewed. That is the
first step.''
While the opposition to
Graham's execution was widely expressed on
general principle, critics
in Italy, Germany, Britain and at the United
Nations said it also
violated international law because Graham was 17, a
minor, at the time of
the crime for which he was sentenced to die.
Graham was found guilty
of the 1981 murder of a man during a holdup
outside a Houston supermarket.
The state parole board and appeals courts
rejected his arguments
that he was convicted on shaky evidence from a
single eyewitness and
that his trial lawyer did a poor job.
"It is a textbook example
of how flawed the U.S. approach to the death
penalty is," Amnesty
International spokesman Rob Freer said in London.
"The U.S. also flouted
requirements of international law that an accused
person should have adequate
legal assistance throughout the process and
that the penalty should
not be imposed if there is a serious doubt about
the person's guilt."
U.N. High Commissioner
for Human Rights Mary Robinson, who had appealed
directly to Bush for
a stay of execution, said the execution "ran counter
to widely accepted international
principles."
Robinson said she "acknowledged
the seriousness of Mr. Graham's crime,"
but contended that "abolition
of the death penalty contributes to
enhancement of human
dignity and progressive development of human
rights."
(source: Associated Press)
The 18-member board voted
Thursday afternoon 14-3 to deny Graham a stay
of execution, 12-5 against
commuting his sentence to life imprisonment
and 17-0 against a pardon.
Lynn Brown, the only board
member to explain his decision in writing,
recommended a reprieve
"for the specific purpose of deposing witnesses
... while under oath
and penalty of perjury and acquiring results of
polygraphs."
He wrote that he specifically
wanted to explore "the whereabouts of
Graham during the evening
of May 13, 1981, with particular attention
to the hours between
8:30 and 10:30 p.m."
Defense lawyers contend
they have witnesses that could clear Graham, but
state's lawyers say those
witnesses have been determined by courts to be
not credible.
"Gary Graham's guilt for
that offense was supported by the evidence, in
my estimation," said
board Chairman Gerald Garrett, the only board member
who would comment.
"The things that took
me so long to come to a conclusion about are those
issues that got lost
-- his age at the time of the offense, the length of
the trial and the quality
of the lawyers. It wasn't the best presentation
of the evidence" by either
defense lawyers or prosecutors.
Graham was 17 at the time
of the crime, and defense lawyers also have
claimed his trial attorney
was ineffective because he never investigated
the case or called any
witnesses who might have cleared him.
Parole staffers at 7 of
the 8 board offices around the state
intercepted calls to
individual board members, saying either Garrett or
an unidentified official
had directed them to refer all calls to him. The
Huntsville office closed
Thursday afternoon, a move Garrett had advised
if staffers felt their
personal safety was in jeopardy.
But board members' steadfast
refusal to talk with the media or explain
how they reached their
decision in what has become perhaps the most
contentious execution
the state has carried out in nearly two decades has
raised anew allegations
of a bunker mentality.
Garrett defended the board's
long-standing policy of meeting privately
and then phoning in their
votes or sending them by fax.
He said "the truth really
takes a beating in the public discourse" by
defense attorneys, abolitionists
and prosecutors.
"I don't think it is the
parole board's proper place to be out there in
the midst of making comments
while we're also about the business of
providing a complete
and unbiased review of the facts," he said.
State law exempts the
board from open meetings laws, and Garrett noted
that the closed decision-making
process has been upheld by courts.
If decision-makers ultimately
decide the board should hold public
hearings in the clemency
process, the board would have to change. But he
said such a process would
result in the truth getting lost.
"It's apparent that what
a good deal of people want is a public forum in
order to advocate a particular
position," Garrett said. "Other people are
looking for a public
spectacle. And if when it's all said and done if
we're moved in that direction,
we'll move. But right now I would suggest
that the prudent thing
to do, the proper thing to do given the gravity of
the decision-making that
we're asked to undertake is to enforce a modicum
of privacy and respect
for the process."
(source: Houston
Chronicle)
******************
The family of Bobby Lambert
did not celebrate Thursday night when they
learned the one-time
teen criminal convicted of killing him in 1981 had
been executed.
"I think justice has been
served and I'm glad it's over," Dorothy
Lambert, his ex-wife,
said in a telephone interview shortly after Gary
Graham died by lethal
injection.
Bobby Lambert's son, Stephen,
added that he would have been satisfied had
Graham somehow been eligible
for life in prison without possibility of
parole, a sentence not
available to Texas juries.
"By no way are we happy
Gary Graham is dead," Lambert said. "He put
himself in that situation.
We didn't put him there."
Lambert added that he
might have found a way to forgive Graham had the
convicted killer not
called for community violence on his behalf.
"But I don't hate Gary
Graham and I hope God has mercy on his soul,"
Lambert said.
Graham's attorneys, who
worked 15 hours Thursday trying to find a way to
halt his execution, were
emotional after their efforts ultimately failed.
"The only thing I can
tell you that, in addition to the loss of a human
life today, I'm extraordinarily
disappointed that the system did not work
in this case," said Jack
Zimmermann, who wept when the parole board
rejected Graham's final
clemency request.
Zimmermann and colleague
Richard Burr both said they believe Graham was
innocent. David Spiers,
whose leg was almost blown off during a Graham
robbery three days after
Lambert was killed, said justice was done.
"It's a sad, sad day for
society whenever we take the life of a human
being, but justice has
prevailed," he said. "I'm glad (Texas Gov.)
George Bush followed
the law of the land. After going through 33 appeals,
Gary Graham got his day."
Both the Lamberts and
Spiers credited eyewitness Bernadine Skillern with
sticking to her account
that placed Graham as the man who killed Bobby
Lambert on May 13, 1981,
outside of a Houston Safeway store.
So far, Skillern has not revealed her position on capital punishment.
"I don't feel joy and
I don't feel sadness. I only feel relief. I hope
to get back to my privacy,
put this incident behind me and now move on,"
Skillern said in a statement
released by her attorney, Rusty Hardin.
Burr, a death penalty
opponent, said Graham's execution, despite what
critics characterized
as flimsy evidence and ineffective counsel,
could further stimulate
the movement to suspend executions.
"He would have wanted
it to be the beginning of a new era," Burr said.
"He would want his death
to energize the rest of the country."
Stephen Lambert rejected
the notion that executions offer "closure" to
families of murder victims.
"It's not over, because my dad's still dead," he said.
Associated Press
06/22/00
HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Gary Graham,
subject of the most contentious Texas
death penalty case since Gov. George
W. Bush began running for president,
was executed Thursday night for a 1981
murder he said he did not commit.
Graham, 36, received a lethal injection for the killing of a man in a
holdup outside a Houston supermarket. The state parole board and
appeals courts rejected his arguments that he was convicted on shaky
evidence from a single eyewitness and that his trial lawyer did a poor
job.
Graham, who had vowed to ``fight like
hell'' on the trip to the death chamber,
appeared to have put up a struggle. He
was strapped to the gurney around his
wrists and across his head — more
restraints than are normally used in
Texas executions.
Angry final statement
He made a long, defiant final statement
in which he reasserted his innocence
and said he was being lynched. ``I die fighting for what I believed in,''
Graham said. ``The truth will come out.''
The execution was witnessed by supporters that included the Rev.
Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Amnesty International
representative Bianca Jagger.
Bush said he supported the execution and pointed out that Graham's
case had been reviewed by 33 state and federal judges.
``After considering all of the facts I am
convinced justice is being done,'' Bush
said after final appeals were denied.
``May God bless the victim, the family of the victim, and may God
bless Mr. Graham.''
Outside the Huntsville prison, hundreds of Graham supporters gathered
in stifling heat and humidity near the brick building where 222
executions have now been carried out since capital punishment
resumed in Texas in 1982. The total is by far the highest in the nation.
No options for Bush
When the Texas parole board, made up of 18 Bush appointees, refused
to block the execution, that left the Republican governor with no
options. The single 30-day reprieve a Texas governor may unilaterally
give a condemned inmate was issued to Graham by Bush's
predecessor in 1993.
The parole board, which has spared a prisoner only once during Bush's
tenure, could have granted a 120-day reprieve, a commutation to a
lesser sentence, or a conditional pardon.
The Supreme Court, a federal judge and
state appeals court also turned down
Graham's last-minute appeals, which
delayed the execution for more than two
hours.
The nation's high court turned down
Graham's appeal on a 5-4 vote along its
conservative-liberal ideological fault line.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and
Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin
Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and
Clarence Thomas voted to reject the
appeal.
Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and
Stephen G. Breyer voted to order the execution postponed, presumably
to give the court more time to consider his appeal.
Graham was convicted of killing 53-year-old Bobby Lambert in a holdup
outside a Houston supermarket one night in 1981. He pleaded guilty to
10 robberies around the same time but said he was innocent of the
murder.
No physical evidence tied Graham to the killing, and ballistics tests
showed that the gun he had when he was arrested was not the murder
weapon. But the witness who identified him, Bernadine Skillern, has
never wavered.
Skillern, who was waiting in her car outside the supermarket while her
daughter ran inside, saw the holdup from about 30 feet away. She said
the lighting in the parking lot was adequate for her to see Graham.
Key witnesses not introduced
Graham also argued that his lawyer during the trial, Ron Mock, should
have introduced other witnesses who would say he was not the killer.
But those witnesses initially told police they couldn't identify the killer,
and prosecutors said they were not actual eyewitnesses.
During Bush's 5 1/2 years in office, 133 men and two women have been
executed. He said he would treat Graham's case no differently than any
other he has considered.
Two years ago, Bush told the parole board to review the case of serial
killer Henry Lee Lucas because of questions about Lucas' conviction.
His death sentence eventually was commuted to life. This month, Bush
granted a condemned man a 30-day reprieve so he could pursue DNA
tests.
The debate over Graham's case came amid growing questions about
the death penalty. Illinois Gov. George Ryan has placed a moratorium
on executions, and Bush and Vice President Al Gore have been forced
to address the issue as they campaign for president.
Loud protests
Graham's case brought the loudest protests since pickax killer Karla
Faye Tucker was executed in 1998, the first woman put to death in
Texas since the Civil War era.
``I recognize there are good people who oppose the death penalty,''
Bush said. ``I've heard their message and I respect their heartfelt
point of view.''
Leading up to the execution, Graham refused meals but met for
about an hour with Jackson, who said he and the inmate talked and
prayed.
``He was amazingly upbeat,'' Jackson said. ``There were no tears
shed. He had a sense of inner peace. He feels he was being used as
a kind of change agent to expose the system. With every passing
hour ... there is mass education around the world about what is
happening in Texas.''
Outside the prison, six people were arrested for breaking through
police lines; other activists burned American flags. Another 150
people protested outside the governor's mansion in Austin.
As far away as Northampton, Mass., eight people protesting
Graham's execution were arrested after they handcuffed themselves
together and lay across a main intersection. Police said 10 other
protesters were on the scene but cleared out quickly when
authorities threatened arrest.
Peter Cooney
06/22/00
WASHINGTON, June 22 (Reuters) -
Texas death row inmate Gary Graham,
who was executed on Thursday for a
1981 murder, always protested his
innocence, expressing confidence he
would one day become a free man and help lead the fight against the
death penalty.
``I hope to be first and foremost at the forefront of the movement to
abolish the death penalty,'' Graham said in a 1993 interview in a prison
about 85 miles (130 km) north of Houston.
Graham, wearing a white prison smock and a gold crucifix around his
neck, was upbeat as he conducted the interview after the Texas Court
of Criminal Appeals stayed his previous date with the death chamber.
``I am very encouraged at this time, very
confident and very hopeful,'' Graham
said. ``I think there's a lot of people out
there that's pulling for me and want to
have the evidence heard in this case
and I think if that evidence is heard I
believe I will be eventually cleared.''
He said that in his years on death row
he had read extensively and studied to
be a paralegal with the goal of helping himself and other death row
inmates.
``I think that I have definitely grown a lot over the years,'' said Graham,
who called himself the product of an impoverished, dysfunctional home.
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