Infinite Hope Page 4

  My personal quarters were as I’d come to expect: there was a bed with worn-out springs holding a lumpy mattress that looked like it had seen more than its share of inmates. In the back of the cell was a small window. An intercom speaker was mounted in the wall next to the cell door. I was taking in my dismal new surroundings when I heard somebody call out my name.

  “Yo! Graves! This is Scotty Burns,” an inmate yelled from another cell.

  “Who?” I asked, loud enough for him to hear me.

  “It’s Scotty Burns. From Brenham.”

  I peered through the bars of the door, scanning the other cells. It shouldn’t have surprised me to see someone from home in jail. Guys were always getting picked up for one thing or another. Just about everyone, it seemed, went in and out of custody as a fact of life. But still, to find Scotty, an acquaintance from home, in an adjacent cell in Caldwell, threw me for a loop.

  But it was the man in head bandages in the cell across the way that drew my attention. Without his mummy wrap, I’d have had a hard time picking him out of a lineup. But in that moment, I was sure it was Robert Carter. Every hair on my body stood at attention.

  I stared at him for a while, trying to glean from his face something, anything, that could help me understand why he’d put me there. Finally, I decided to engage him.

  “Say, man,” I called out to him. “Do you really think I did this with you?” As I waited for his response, part of me wondered if Carter might be crazy. He didn’t speak. He just shook his head as if to say no and raised his index finger to his lips, urging me to hush.

  “For my momma’s sake and for my kids’, will you please tell these people the truth?” I pleaded.

  He nodded at me before walking slowly from the front of his cell door. Carter’s response was at once maddening and comforting. The odds of a cell being available directly across from him seemed long. They had put me there, I was sure, believing I would talk to him if given the chance. My head shook with red-hot emotion while the blood in my body ran cold.

  “Look out, Graves. They got them speakers on in the cells!” It was Scotty Burns again, hollering at the top of his lungs. His news wasn’t news to me.

  “Shit, Scotty. I don’t give a damn. I want them to hear me so I can go home!” I retreated into my cell, determined to keep my emotions in check. I feared what might happen if I didn’t get a grip on myself. Besides, Carter had just assured me that he would tell the truth. I comforted myself with the thought that as soon as that happened, they’d surely let me go, probably as early as the next morning.

  Just as I’d started to calm myself with that thought, another voice called out.

  “Two cell! Look out, two cell!”

  “What’s up?” I responded. The small window in the back wall of my cell faced the jail’s driveway. I couldn’t see my neighbors from there, but I found it was easier to hear them. Positioned against this back wall, I told him my name and he told me his. Kevin was one of two young men in the cell next to mine.*

  I could tell by the tone of their voices that they were scared. Kevin told me that he’d never been in jail before. He’d been driving his girlfriend’s car and, unbeknownst to him, there were drugs in the trunk. The police released the girl but arrested Kevin and his friend.

  “What do you think they’ll do to us?” he asked, not concealing his fear. “Have you ever been arrested before?”

  I told them they’d be all right. They didn’t own the car, after all, and the cops didn’t find any drugs on them. But Kevin’s questions took me aback. I was concerned about him and his friend, but I was really trying to reassure myself. Kevin’s doubt in the system raised fresh feelings of doubt in me. There were many things that I could have told him about my own experience with Texas law enforcement, but I didn’t. I could’ve told him that I first got familiar with the criminal justice system a few years beforehand, when I was twenty-two. I hadn’t been a big-time drug dealer, but you didn’t have to be a ringer for the cartels to catch the attention of police at the height of the War on Drugs. I made a few hundred bucks a month selling marijuana, but one of my sales was to an undercover agent. A month later, the police arrested me for possession with the intent to distribute.

  I thought I’d just be given a fine, since I had no record and had sold only a small amount of dope. By the time the police got ahold of me, though, the charge had changed. They accused me of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, a cocaine charge that I knew nothing about. I learned early in life that the system has a way of turning nothing into something when it wants to. I sat in jail on a $45,000 bond. The district attorney offered me a deal that he’d offered many others—plead guilty, and you’ll serve 180 days in jail; go to trial, he said, and you may have to pay the trial tax. He assured me that if I went before a jury, I would serve fifteen years in prison. I was helpless and voiceless. The prosecutor was precise and his voice was cutting. It was his best offer, and I didn’t want to chance turning it down. Like so many, I took the deal, falsely confessing to the cocaine charge. It wasn’t worth the risk of spending most of my adult life in prison.

  I could have tried to reassure Kevin that the truth would prevail. I also could have told him, from my experience, that he was in for a ride, even on the simplest of drug charges. The best I could muster was a sentence or two of encouragement. I needed to hear for myself that everything would be all right. I had compromised the truth once before in this system, but with my life on the line, there was no way I was going to do it again.

  _____________________

  * Though the names in this memoir are real to the best of my memory, this inmate’s name has been altered for privacy.

  AUGUST 25, 1992:

  THE GRAND JURY

  THE STATE MOVED QUICKLY in the days after my arrest as they prepared their case against me. During the last week of August—a little over a week after the Davis family murders—there was a grand jury proceeding. Yolanda, Bernice, and Bubba all testified on my behalf, trying to convince the jurors and prosecutor the truth regarding my whereabouts on the night of the crime, but apparently their words fell on deaf ears. By the time the grand jury convened, I still did not have an attorney, focused as I was on two things only: the truth and going home. Further, beyond a rote reading of my Miranda rights during the stress of my arrest, no one from law enforcement had brought up the question of legal representation.

  During this time, I hadn’t had much contact with anyone in my family besides my mom. I didn’t want my sons coming up to the jail and seeing me in an orange jumpsuit. Yolanda was the one other person I’d talked to during these first days in jail, but the jailhouse calls were so damn expensive, we’d quickly run up her father’s phone bill and the phone got turned off for insufficient payment.

  I marveled at how quickly I adjusted to jail in such a short time. I somehow managed to sleep a little better each night, despite merciless stabbings from bed springs that themselves seemed convinced of my guilt. That old lumpy mattress had proven just as uncomfortable as it looked, contorting my spine with a roller-coaster like dip in its center. Mosquitoes feasted on my weary skin in what seemed like a nightly ritual. Then again, maybe that sleep was just a mirage, because my mind and body certainly didn’t feel rested.

  On August 25, the jailer on duty approached my cell on a mission. He asked whether I had any interest in testifying before the grand jury. I jumped to my feet eagerly, scared that the offer might expire if I didn’t act immediately. His next words brought instantaneous relief.

  “Another officer will be by to escort you to the courthouse,” he told me. “Wait for a few minutes.” He handed me a bar of soap and a toothbrush. Even herculean attempts to keep a cell clean couldn’t beat the filth brought on by late summer in the heart of Texas. I soaped up and scrubbed away a layer of sweat that had poured from me ceaselessly since they’d brought me to Caldwell. I rushed to get ready, still sure at this point that once somebody, anybody, heard my testimony, the
y’d send me home.

  An officer slapped handcuffs onto my wrists, a sensation that was becoming familiar.

  “We’re just going to take a little walk,” he told me. “Now don’t you cause me any problems.”

  Did he think I’d try to make a run for it with the state’s steel still strapped to my hands? I just nodded, and he led me to the courthouse, about three hundred yards from the jail, in the middle of the town square. A recognizable face greeted me as I entered. It was Ranger Earl Pearson.

  “How are you, Ranger?” I asked.

  “I’m fine, Graves. How’re they treating you?”

  “Not too bad,” I assured him, thinking that most dog owners I knew wouldn’t leave their dog in that old kennel they called a jail.

  “I was told that you’re willing to testify before the grand jury.” His statement was more like a question. I told him I was more than willing.

  “Do you have an attorney?” he asked. This was the first time anyone had raised this question. Maybe Ranger Pearson had taken a liking to me, or maybe he just felt pity.

  “I don’t need an attorney if I’m just going to tell the truth,” I answered. I’d been taught in school that the United States had the best criminal justice system in the world. At the time, I wanted to believe that the system works. I needed to believe it would work for me this time, because so much was on the line. My life hung in the balance. Even though I’d falsely confessed once before, I did that in part because I had put myself in that situation. If I hadn’t been trying to sell weed, I wouldn’t have been in a position where they could put a false cocaine charge on me. It was my fault that time, and I rationalized accepting the plea deal because my own actions had put me in that spot.

  Now, facing a capital murder charge for a crime I’d had no part in, the stakes were so much higher. I continued to believe that such an obvious error would be corrected. Of course they would come to see that I was totally innocent, that there wasn’t any proof saying otherwise. After all, this charge carried the death penalty, so the state had to get it right, didn’t it?

  “I would appreciate if you were in there with me,” I told Pearson.

  “No problem. I’ll go in there with you,” he said.

  The room was simple, adorned only with the Texan relics that decorate many of the state’s courtrooms. Giant stars sent the message that the state meant business. I saw the grand jury members gathered around a table. A court stenographer sat patiently in front of a contraption that looked like the love child of a computer and a typewriter.

  A petit jury—twelve people deliberating and deciding guilty or not guilty by a unanimous verdict in a criminal trial—is what most people think of when they imagine jury duty or see a jury portrayed on television. A grand jury, however, is basically a function of the district attorney’s office. It’s operated entirely by the DA, and there is no judge present (although I later learned you could go to a judge for a ruling if you had an attorney who opposed something that was happening in the grand jury).

  The DA’s office opens a felony case by seeking an indictment in the grand jury, in which a majority of the panel must vote by a show of hands whether there is probable cause to formally accuse a defendant of a crime. The grand jurors are an investigative body too and are allowed to directly question both witnesses and any defendant who chooses to testify at this early stage of the proceedings. In that way it’s very unusual, as it’s the only time in a criminal case when jurors can ask questions directly of witnesses, and then it’s up to the jurors to decide if there’s enough evidence to let the case continue. It’s a low threshold, but an important one. The grand jury can also reject charges in what’s known as a “no true bill” if jurors feel there isn’t enough evidence to support an indictment. I, of course, wanted a no true bill in my case and held out hope for it given my innocence. I wanted to tell the grand jury, the state, and anyone else who would listen that I had nothing to do with the murders.

  Burleson County’s district attorney was Charles Sebesta. He was slender but imposing. With short, parted hair combed from left to right atop his head, wire-rimmed glasses, and a prominent nose, he looked the part of a serious Texas prosecutor. He acted the part, too, taking immediate control of the room. He seemed charged up for the proceedings, and later I would wonder if Sebesta’s excitement stemmed from the fact that I’d shown up voluntarily and without an attorney.

  “Graves, if you’ll come in and have a seat right here, we can get this interview started,” Sebesta said, his matter-of-fact tone commanding the attention of the grand jurors. “Will you state your full name?”

  “Anthony Charles Graves.”

  “How old are you?”

  “I’m twenty-seven years old.”

  Sebesta explained that the jury would be asking me questions. I could answer any or all of them.

  “I don’t have any problems answering your questions,” I said.

  One grand juror asked me my age. “Twenty-six,” I said. Several grand jury members proceeded to ask about my involvement in the crime. Again, there wasn’t much I could say. I hadn’t been there. I couldn’t tell them anything. All I could do was insist repeatedly on my innocence. Over time, their questions got more specific, each one seemingly lobbed at me with purpose.

  “Have you ever owned a knife before?” one of the jurors asked.

  “No,” I answered simply, because I’d never owned a knife as a weapon. I wasn’t thinking about the knife that, almost two years prior, a former employer and friend, Roy Allen, had given me as a souvenir, from a kit of cheap assembly knives he’d purchased. I hadn’t seen that knife in more than a year, and I’d only ever “owned” it in the most superficial sense. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this brief exchange would take on enormous significance to my case going forward. My answer, though truthful, was an unforced error that would come back to haunt me.

  At some point during my prior questioning, before the grand jury proceeding, I had described to the police my whereabouts on the night of the crime. I gave them my alibi, which I thought would be pretty helpful for them to offer to the grand jury, particularly because it was truthful. I hadn’t been allowed to observe any of Yolanda’s, Bubba’s, or Bernice’s testimony—those proceedings were conducted in private. Even if I’d had a lawyer, she would not have been allowed in the room other than when I went in to testify, and then she would technically not be permitted to speak to the jurors but only to observe and whisper advice in my ear. I did learn that they never invited the testimony of Yolanda’s brother or his girlfriend, who’d come with me to pick up Bernice that night. I had no idea why the state wouldn’t want as much information as possible when someone’s life was on the line. I’d heard it said that the grand jury is so much in a DA’s control, a prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich if he or she wanted to. I wasn’t impressed with control. I wanted the truth to come out. But my arrest and the legal proceedings were starting to look like some kind of a game.

  Ultimately, their questions exhausted, the grand jury members ceded control back to Sebesta. He asked if I had anything further to say to them. I certainly did. I told the jury again that I had nothing to do with the crime. I told them, too, that I’d be glad to answer any questions they might have in the future. To my surprise, my words didn’t seem to register. The jurors all shared the same emotionless expression, staring through or over me. I desperately wanted some morsel of recognition that I could cling to, but that never came. My mind went as blank as their faces.

  I shared the short walk back to jail with the same officer who had escorted me the first time. On the way back, I saw Ranger Pearson. I nodded at him, the best I could do with my hands shackled. He waved back. My optimism rose. Back in my cell, I saw Carter looking out from his bars.

  “Carter, I just testified in front of the grand jury,” I said, approaching my cell door.

  “That’s good,” he said. “They asked me to testify, but my attorney advised me not to go.”

 
; That Carter was already receiving legal advice had somehow eluded me, and it gave me pause. It is easy to look back and realize that, of course, Carter’s attorney would tell him to clam up, as he’d had plenty to hide.

  “But I’m going to do it,” he continued. “So I can tell them the truth.”

  Relief poured over me as I let out a sigh.

  “Thank you, man,” I told him. “This is real hard on my mother.”

  I knew that they had held me on Carter’s word alone. If he recanted his lie, they’d have to set me free. I prepared myself mentally to say good-bye to jail, to the vicious mattress springs that had become my nighttime nemesis.

  The following morning, on August 26th, Carter went to see the grand jury. I was in my cell thinking about home when I heard the clicks and clangs as he was returned to the block after his testimony before the panel.

  “Did you tell them the truth?” I asked.

  “Yes, I did. My attorney told me they’ll probably be releasing you soon. But they’ll keep me.”

  Carter seemed sincere, and I’d later learn that he was telling the truth. He’d testified against the advice of his attorney, who had warned him that the questions could be tricky. Carter had indeed confirmed my innocence. When asked about the crime, he told the jurors that I’d had nothing to do with it.

  He had just delivered the best news yet since my arrest. Still, I had nagging questions that I wanted to ask him. Had he really killed all those people? Did he light those children on fire? I looked intently at him through my cell door. I was scared. I knew that I was looking at the man who had gotten me into this mess. I didn’t want to know that I was also looking into the face of a killer. I suppressed my curiosity and let it go. Carter had told the truth. I was ready to forgive him for his lie.