examination by Sebesta, Carter said to the District Attorney “I told you...it was all me, but you said you didn’t want to hear it” (Colloff, 2010). Carter continued to proclaim Graves’s innocence even from the execution chamber. It was immensely clear that D.A. Sebesta was guilty of prosecutorial misconduct. In 2002, Nicole Cásarez and her students from the Innocence Network, which works with the journalism department at Houston’s University of St. Thomas, picked up Anthony Graves’s case. Beginning with nothing, picking up the case after three rounds of the conviction being upheld during appeals, Cásarez had no choice but to bring the case to the federal courts. In 2003, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals granted an evidentiary hearing. Cásarez’s Brady Violation claim was denied on the grounds that it would not have affected the original case. The 5th Circuit was, in simple terms, the end of the line for Anthony Graves. On March 3rd, 2006 a unanimous decision held that the case hinged entirely on Carter’s perjured testimony. Perjured testimony, as Krieger explains, “is the leading cause of wrongful convictions in capital cases” (Krieger, 2011). Not only had Carter’s perjured testimony led to Anthony Graves’s conviction, but two jail informants had belatedly reported Graves and Carter confessing to the murders while awaiting trial behind bars. It was later revealed that Robertson, one of the guards who testified, was under indictment and charged against him for cruelty to horses were never pursued following his testimony. “Had Graves’s attorneys known of Carter’s statements to the District Attorney,” wrote District Judge W. Eugene Davis, “the defense’s approach could have been much different… and probably highly effective.” Davis continued, “perhaps even more egregious than district attorney Sebesta’s failure to disclose carter’s most recent statement in his deliberate trial tactic of eliciting testimony from Carter and the chief investigating officer, Ranger Coffman, that the D.A. knew was false (Colloff, 2010).” Charles
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