Infinite Hope

by Anthony Graves

  Dennis was in his forties. Though he was older than me, we had some of the same friends in town. Folks who come from small towns pile up far more acquaintances than actual friends. Dennis wouldn’t have known much about me back then and even less now. But at the time, he was a rare link to home.

  “What’s been happening, Dennis?” I asked. When you share suffering, it doesn’t take but a minute to open up to people, even if you’ve only just met. Dennis had been picked up on an outstanding warrant, a consequence of an unpaid ticket of some kind, and here we were together in the same holding cell. He seemed anxious to talk about my case.

  “Everybody’s shocked these white folks charged you with this crime,” he said. “Don’t nobody believe this shit.” As he spoke his smile turned to a scowl. He asked the obvious question: Why me? I was no closer to an answer than I’d been during any other part of my pretrial detainment.

  “Everybody knows you’re all about them women, Graves!” There might have been a time when I’d take offense to someone referring to my reputation as a man about town. Certainly I’d earned it. Dennis joked that he might have believed it if they’d charged me with capital heartbreak, but not capital murder. I nodded at him, hoping he spoke for my whole community in seeing me as innocent.

  In the weeks prior to my trial, I became dependent upon sources who were less than reliable. A cellmate here. A jailer there. One trusty told me that Sebesta and the Texas Rangers had taken Carter for a drive out to an open piece of land off a country road where Carter had told law enforcement he had hidden the weapons used to murder the Davis family. The Rangers even got divers to search the local lakes. It seemed like a lot to go through to develop a case against an innocent man. Now, I didn’t think every law enforcement officer in Texas was out to get me, but I did know that in big cases, they quickly latched on to a suspect—any suspect—because that meant they were “doing their job.” The alternative is an open multiple-homicide investigation and a “murderer at large” in the community. No public official relishes answering to a city full of scared taxpayers or reading news stories about their incompetence. They liked cases to be investigated and solved, with the perps locked up fast. I was an easy target, with the shoddy testimony of a convicted criminal streamlining their way to a wrong conclusion. After all, who would really fight back? Me? I was poor, black, and powerless, and someone said I did it. That’s all it took.

  I could never get settled in jail, and maybe that was a good thing. In the period before my trial, it seemed as if I was being moved to a new cell every few weeks. The last of these moves would be to Angleton, in Brazoria County. After the hearing earlier in August, my attorneys had moved for a change of venue, and the judge approved. Capital murder cases typically bring to bear the full force of a community’s emotions. Most prosecutors are happy to try cases in the towns where the crime in question took place. Jurors are connected to the community and usually feel a duty to the families of the victims.

  I initially thought that the move to Angleton might work in my favor. I hadn’t yet come to understand how the criminal law process is designed to advantage the prosecution. The move to Angleton wasn’t arbitrary. Sebesta was a skilled venue shopper. He’d moved cases there before with success. His particular brand of law-and-order bravado fit nicely in a town not known for its mercy. Angleton had a history. In 1923, the state conducted its last legal hanging there in the Brazoria County Courthouse. Nathan Lee was a middle-aged black man who was severely mentally disabled. Unable to read or write, he’d signed his own death document with an X. He’d been hanged in a ceremony not too different from the kind Texas uses to kill its citizens on death row today, with the families of the victims and the condemned looking on as witness and sympathizer, and perhaps a member of the press or two to report on the execution. Lee’s death might not have been a lynching, but it was close. The Ku Klux Klan famously sent flowers to the funeral of the white man Lee had allegedly killed. In subsequent decades, the killing machine had been well-maintained: Brazoria County had since sent seven men to the death chamber.

  Fat droplets of rain plopped onto my head as I walked from the Washington County Jail to the squad car that would carry me to Angleton, a few weeks before my trial. The transporting officer placed my few possessions in the trunk of his police car. For me, this drive was a rare moment of solace. I couldn’t really move, my feet being shackled, but I didn’t want to. I had heard that filmmakers used rain to signal that a plot change was afoot. If it was good enough for Francis Ford Coppola when he made The Godfather, I guessed it was good enough for me.

  Brazoria County illustrated the mass incarceration trend of the early 1990s. In 1980, America’s federal and state prisons and local jails housed just over 500,000 men and women combined. By 1992, when I was arrested, that number had climbed to almost 1.3 million.* In the two years between my arrest and my entry into Angleton, the United States had somehow added another 170,000 to the ranks of incarcerated Americans. The jail in Angleton was a reflection of that. My cell was overcrowded, bursting beyond capacity. Two inmates slept on the dirty floor, their heads resting on clothes they used to fashion pillows. One slept on the table where we would eat our meals. I felt like the new kid in school when I arrived at the cell door with my standard-issue plastic mattress and pillow. No one was about to give up his spot to make me a bit more comfortable. It felt like a hostel that had conveniently failed to turn off its online reservation system to make up for a few lean months. I wanted a refund.

  With our sleeping quarters so tight, I quickly got to know my new neighbors. They vetted my criminal history, not unlike worried landlords renting out a room.

  “So, what are you in for?” one of the men asked.

  “I’m down here for a trial. They changed my venue and set me up down here.” I was deliberately evasive, for obvious reasons.

  “Wait, you’re the guy they’re accusing of killing a whole family,” another commented.

  Several other faces turned to check me out. Bad news certainly traveled far, even if it hadn’t traveled fast. They had heard of me like inmates hear of most things, through snippets of news reports on the television. They told me that Sebesta had been all over the news, proclaiming my guilt to all who would listen. So much for the presumption of innocence. I later learned that it was wrong for him to make such inflammatory statements to the media (something about “poisoning the potential jury pool”), but, then, I’m sure he knew that, just as he also must have known that no one would call him on it.

  “Well, he’s going to have to bring it on, because I have truth on my side,” I said in the toughest voice I could muster. My new friends offered various warnings. Their own experience had taught them that in Angleton, history was always nipping at our heels. Surely they had just wanted to prepare me for what might come. But their words didn’t help. I knew good and well what I was up against. Truth may have been on my side, but Angleton’s judicial history was strewn with Confederate relics.

  _____________________

  * Nicole Flatow, “Federal Prison Population Spiked 790 Percent Since 1980,” Think-Progress, February 7, 2013, https://thinkprogress.org/federal-prison-population-spiked-790-percent-since-1980-7d0681772584.

  OCTOBER 1994:

  THE JURY SELECTION

  IN MOST CRIMINAL CASES, the jury-selection process is completed in a matter of hours. In capital cases like mine, it can take days or even weeks to choose a jury. Dozens of men and women go through what is in effect an extensive interview process. It’s partly so the lawyers can get a sense of whether they’d naturally side with the defense or the state, and if there is some bias that could make them unfit for either side. The other purpose is to determine whether the juror has the capacity to follow the law. Though the system purports to be concerned with potential jurors’ understanding of the presumption of innocence, what they’re really after is death qualification. In Texas, a juror could not then and cannot now serve on a capital jury unless that juror declares her
self capable of applying the death penalty in certain circumstances. It’s a process that almost necessarily excludes the bleeding-heart types, if you could rustle any from beneath whatever rocks gave them refuge in a place like Angleton.

  As for me and Calvin, our goal was simple. We needed to select twelve jurors and two alternates that would make the state prove my guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Sebesta’s goal was different. He wanted jurors who would convict me on sight and be willing to choose death.

  I felt all sorts of nausea as I faced the jury pool. I was on display before a group of people who had almost certainly pre-formed some conclusions about my essential character. When Sebesta rose from his chair and started the process, he was all business. Most lawyers use this time to crack a joke or otherwise connect with the group. Some employ strategies to engage potential jurors who look like they’d rather be asleep. I saw none of the latter on my panel. Each candidate seemed willing, anxious even, to captain my fate. They listened intently as Sebesta described the selection process. He was insistent that he had the evidence required to convict me. It took every ounce of restraint I could muster to keep my backside affixed to that court chair. I wanted to jump up and ask him, “What evidence?” knowing he had none.

  When Calvin took his turn at getting to know the jurors, he had me stand with him, arm to arm, as a way of humanizing me through an open display of physical contact. I felt stupid. I had words of my own, a story to tell the jury. But at this point, it was up to Calvin to do all the talking as my representative, so I tried to connect with the jurors through eye contact, that old job-interview tactic. I set my gaze on one individual after another. One man looked away, another stared down. I attached meaning to everything. Maybe they were averting their gaze because I scared them. Perhaps they looked away because their minds were made up. It did my mind no good to worry, but that didn’t stop me from chasing those questions down rabbit trails. I resigned myself to the terrifying reality that I’d have to prove those jurors wrong, even though I technically didn’t have the burden of proof.

  The jurors were white, for the most part. There was only one person on the jury who shared my skin tone, and he was picked to be the foreman. It became apparent just how steep my climb might be.

  Juror questioning was curious to me. Sebesta gave a handful of panel members the chance to speak their minds about the justice system. Some of the questions were simple; some seemed like tests to determine a juror’s bias.

  “I don’t think he would be here if he hadn’t done something,” one juror said. More than one person said they felt that most young blacks were criminals. Pressed to explain, one man said, “When I see blacks approaching my car, I have the tendency to lock my car doors.”

  I was like a fly buzzing from stop to stop on some antebellum porch, where the genteel class talked about how scary I looked. In another setting, it might have been an entertaining portal to an earlier time. But in that court, my life was on the line. Still, I was happy to hear the answers. Better an open racist than a quiet one, or so I thought. This juror had given his version of the truth, a brave showing of transparency that would surely see him off my jury. But I winced as I then watched that juror redeemed through a process called “rehabilitation.” The judge asked questions of him that couldn’t have possibly uncovered the truth.

  “I hear what you’re saying, but do you think you can follow the law in this case?” the judge asked.

  It took only a nod and a subtle grunt that sounded like a yes to “rehabilitate” this juror. He’d given the game away, admitting that for him, the presumption of innocence could never hold. Yet one question from the judge had restored his eligibility to serve. It struck me that this form of so-called rehabilitation was no better than releasing a drunk with a beer in his hand on the promise that he’d pour it out when he left the facility. Calvin looked at me, questioning my opinion about his eligibility. I didn’t hesitate.

  “Strike his ass!” I said. Before too long, we were out of our peremptory challenges, the strikes we could use without offering a reason to the court. The law only gives each side so many peremptory challenges to ding potential jurors, and rehabilitated racists outstripped our allotted exclusions. The judge had the discretion to grant additional challenges. He chose not to, however, and the jury pool took on an unsavory cast.

  Meanwhile, a review of juror questionnaires led to the elimination of nearly every black person on hand. In a back room, I watched as they were excused in turn for one problem or another. The Supreme Court’s holding in Batson v. Kentucky was supposed to guarantee a defendant a fair trial with a jury composed of his peers by prohibiting a peremptory challenge to a juror on the basis of race, gender, or ethnicity. In reality, making “Batson challenges,” as they are called in practice, that jurors were being excused because they were black, did little to usher a few more brothers onto my jury. At the time in Somerville, where the crime had taken place, the US Census gauged that just over 30 percent of the citizens were black. On my jury, only a single black man was invited to join with eleven white men and women.

  The jury results were disheartening. I didn’t know the jurors, but the way they looked at me made me feel like an interloper in my own case.

  Calvin left me to find out who the jury had picked as its foreman. As though it mattered. I assured him that it would be the black man. He looked at me curiously and pushed back from his chair. I waited patiently for him to return, thinking of all the different ways to say “I told you so.”

  “Well, you were right,” he said when he rejoined me in the courtroom. “It’s the black guy.”

  The newly minted foreman was the head of the snake. If they were going to convict me, then the lone black juror would be the face of it all. I questioned whether he could stand up to the pressure of eleven white folks if it came down to that. Hell, it was entirely possible that he’d lead the charge. Very serious people told me the system was designed to uncover the truth, to get it right. My challenge was to empower my heart, which believed that sentiment, over my mind, which saw the cracks in the system, flaws that could cost me my life.

  Trials are mostly a game of hurry up and wait. Once the jury was selected, I retired to my cell. Sebesta’s strategy was clear: control the narrative. The trial hadn’t even begun, yet he was intent to make his case in the local media. Typically, he was given a time slot and handed a microphone to deliver his monologue uncontested. Nobody seemed interested in the quality of the state’s case. “Anthony Graves is guilty of this heinous crime,” he’d say, as if speaking directly to the jurors. To my surprise, the only people who seemed alarmed by the prosecutor’s words were sitting in jail cells beside me. Calvin assured me that Sebesta could talk all he wanted in front of the cameras. We would do our talking in court.

  The reality of what I was up against slammed into me like a rogue wave off the Gulf Coast. I used short, repeatable phrases to calm my nerves and restore my confidence, the audible equivalent of stroking rosary beads. They can’t do no more to me than what God lets them do, I would repeat, like a mantra, and The truth will come out and I’ll have the last laugh. My saving grace was my attitude. They could not make me guilty even if they convicted me, and that made me right all the time.

  This time, I had to put my trust in Calvin. I repeated to myself, over and over, Calvin has a plan, Calvin has a plan. My lawyer was all that I had.

  Those thoughts kept me going. I held an unwavering faith that no matter how cunning a prosecutor might be, his legal hijinks could not overpower the principles of American democracy. The ability to hold onto hope rested with me alone; I had control over that, and it was one of the few things Sebesta couldn’t steal from me. This might have been a naive belief, and yet it saved my life.

  At the same time, I was aware of the systemic bias that existed in Texas against young black men like me. I had witnessed it dozens of times on the streets of my own community. On any given night, you could pretty much bet on seeing a uniformed white man, ha
nd on holster, taking out the cuffs, shouting aggressively at a black or brown person standing against a car, wall, or fence. But I hadn’t known that the criminal justice system would sanction law enforcement officers picking me up from my home and putting me in jail for a capital crime on the basis of false testimony, without a shred of evidence. I wouldn’t have believed it was possible that our legal system was capable of that kind of barbarism.

  I spent most of my time in the days leading up to my trial sitting on the steel table in the Angleton cell, watching television or lying in bed reading books. Sometimes I would play dominoes at the table with some of the guys. I had begun to pick up a few pounds by this time in jail and was now weighing in at about 166 pounds, nearly 10 more than when I’d arrived. I could feel my body starting to change. My energy level wasn’t as high. I was just going with the flow of the day in a cell that now felt very caged in to me. I had nothing to wake up to anymore, except for trial days, and those were emotionally draining. I carried heavy bags under my eyes to court each morning. Calvin had more on his mind than just picking that jury. He had been pressing the state for information on the witnesses the prosecution planned to call. The big question was clear: would Robert Carter testify? Sebesta continued to toy with Calvin, maintaining that Carter’s story was shifting. The state claimed it didn’t know and couldn’t know whether Carter would be called to the stand.