June 22 — Amid a
storm of controversy and protests, condemned murderer Gary Graham was
executed tonight shortly after his last-ditch appeal to a Texas federal
court was rejected.
According to Huntsville Prison officials, Graham angrily denied to the end
murdering victim Bobby Lambert. But just like he promised, Graham resisted
his walk down death row and had to be subdued. He died at 8:49 p.m.
CT.
One of the witnesses to the execution, a
red-eyed and apparently distraught Mike Graczyk of The Associated Press,
said Graham denied in a long, rambling statement killing Lambert. Invoking
the names of Malcolm X and Nelson and Winnie Mandela, Graham, witnesses
said, called a his execution a “murder … part of the genocide of black
people in America.”
“He said, ‘You can kill a
revolutionary, but you cannot stop the revolution’” Graczyk recalled
Graham saying. “‘This is nothing more than simply state-sanctioned murder
in America. They know I am innocent, and they won’t acknowledge it … They
are murdering me tonight.’”
The Rev. Jesse
Jackson, Amnesty International official Bianca Jagger, and the Rev. Al
Sharpton were among the witnesses to Graham’s execution. Graczyk and
another witness Lloyd Gite of a local Texas radio station said Jackson,
who was witnessing an execution for the first time, appeared red-eyed and
visibly upset and that Jagger began crying as Graham read his
statement.
Witnesses said that as his lethal
injection was being administered, Graham looked at Jackson and died with
one eye closed and one eye open, focused on the
reverend.
Huntsville Prison spokesman Larry
Fitzgerald read a statement from Bobby Hanners, Lambert’s grandson, who
expressed sympathy for Graham’s family but insisted the execution was
just.
“My heart goes out to the Graham family,
which must go through the grieving process,” Fitzgerald read. “But I truly
believe that justice has been served.”
Legal
Fight to the End
Graham’s lawyers fought their client’s
execution fiercely. After the Supreme Court’s decision, Graham’s lawyers
filed a last-minute civil action with U.S. District Court in Austin,
delaying the execution a last time. But the federal court rejected the
civil suit, prompting Graham’s lawyers to consider another action in the
U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans before deciding to file
no further appeals for him, allowing Graham’s execution to go
forward.
The high court’s rejection of
Graham’s emergency appeal was close — justices voted 5-4 not to stop the
execution. Before Graham’s last-minute appeals, the 18-member Texas Board
of Pardons and Paroles, which could have recommended a 120-day reprieve or
a commutation to a lesser sentence, voted not to advise a delay in the
execution.
The Supreme Court’s Statement
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IN RE GARY
GRAHAM (99-10120)
“The application for stay of execution of
sentence of death presented to Justice Scalia and by him referred to
the Court is denied. The petition for a writ of habeas corpus is
denied. Justice Stevens, Justice Souter, Justice Ginsburg, and
Justice Breyer would grant the application for stay of execution.”
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Politics
of Death
In recent weeks, Graham’s widely publicized case
was a thorn in the side of Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the likely
Republican presidential nominee, as death-penalty protesters have followed
him on the campaign trail. Under Texas law, Bush has the power to halt
executions, but not without a recommendation from the parole board. The
governor can issue a one-time, 30-day reprieve, but Graham already
received one in 1993, from then-Gov. Ann
Richards.
Bush said he could not delay
Graham’s execution, insisting that he would follow the law of his state,
even if it “costs me politically.” After Graham’s attorneys decided end
their numerous appeals, Bush said he supported his parole board’s
decision.
“ Mr. Graham was found guilty of
capital murder and later sentenced to death by a jury … Graham admitted to
at least 10 armed robberies involving 13 victims, one of them a rape.”
Bush said. “In the last 19 years Mr.Graham’s case has been reviewed more
than 20 times, the claims were found to be without merit. Today the board
voted to have Mr.Graham’s execution to go forward, after considering all
the facts, I am confident that justice is being done. May god bless the
victims, the families of the victims, and may god bless Mr. Graham.”
Bush also noted that Graham’s case had gone
before 33 judges over 19 years and each had found his demands for clemency
“without merit.” The Texas parole board, which has spared a prisoner only
once during Bush’s tenure, voted 14-3 against the 120-day reprieve, 12-5
against commutation to a lesser sentence, and 17-0 against a conditional
pardon. One member is on administrative leave and did not
vote.
Two years ago, Bush directed the parole
board to review the case of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, and his death
sentence eventually was commuted to life in prison.
Death Row
Defiance
Graham, who had said he would not enter the death
chamber quietly and promised to “fight like hell,” — did. Graham fought
guards on Wednesday afternoon as they tried to move him to a small cell in
the death house, prison officials said. Graham also refused food as he met
with family members and spiritual and legal advisers in the hours before
his execution.
Tonight, while strapped to the
gurney, Graham was handcuffed.
Graham urged
his supporters to protest what he called his legal lynching and
assassination. In the hours leading up to his execution, approximately 500
protesters gathered outside the Huntsville death house, holding signs and
yelling, “ Killers! Murderers! … No justice, no peace!” The protests were
mostly peaceful but several supporters broke through police lines.
According to The Associated Press, six were arrested.
Witness
Stands by Story
Graham was convicted in the 1981 killing of
a man outside a Houston Safeway supermarket. At the time, Graham pleaded
guilty to 10 aggravated robberies during a weeklong crime spree that
prosecutors say began with the fatal shooting of Bobby Lambert on May 13,
1981.
But Graham, who was 17 at the time,
always maintained his innocence in the Lambert slaying. The state’s key
testimony came from a single eyewitness who identified Graham as the
gunman at the scene. The witness, Bernadine Skillern, watched from inside
her car as the gunman confronted, then shot
Lambert.
“I saw Mr. Graham shoot and kill Mr.
Lambert on that parking lot in 1981,” Skillern said last week. “That has
not changed. It’s not going to change. I saw him shoot and kill
him.”
A week after Lambert’s death, police
arrested Graham, naked and asleep, at the home of a 57-year-old woman he
had abducted at gunpoint and raped.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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