Life on Death Row as an Innocent Man

https://www.aclu.org/blog/capital-punishment/innocence-and-death-penalty/my-first-night-death-row-innocent-man

By Anthony Graves, Smart Justice Initiatives Manager, ACLU of Texas
January 29, 2018

Anthony Graves was convicted in 1994 for killing six people in 1992. He was exonerated in 2010 after having served 18 and a half years in prison, 16 of which were spent in solitary confinement and 12 of which were on death row. The prosecutor in Graves’ case was eventually disbarred for misconduct, and Texas had to pay Graves $1.45 million in compensation for the damage the state had done to him. Graves now works at the ACLU of Texas as the Smart Justice Initiatives Manager. Below is an excerpt from Graves’ recently published book, “Infinite Hope: How Wrongful Conviction, Solitary Confinement, and 12 years on Death Row Failed to Kill My Soul” (Beacon Press, 2018).

•••••

People typically focus on the death part of a death sentence. What they don’t tell you is that life on death row is a torture all its own. I had no idea that I’d be living in a six-by-nine-foot cage, or that I’d do my business in a steel toilet in plain view of male and female officers alike.

•••••

On the weekdays, we’d spend 22 hours alone in a small cage, only a few feet long and wide. Weekends brought 24 hours of solitary confinement because many officers took the weekends off. To save money, the prison would simply reduce manpower and keep us in our cells all day Saturday and Sunday. We weren’t worth the substitute guards’ wages that would be required to move us to the rec yard and back.

•••••

I later found out she [prison guard] wasn’t as innocent as I thought. She was trafficking in all the ordinary contraband that took on greater value in prison. Inmates paid her hundreds of dollars to deliver cigarettes and weed. One guy even arranged for her to bring him $500 from a friend on the outside. She had taken the money for herself.

•••••