An Innocent Man’s Tortured Days on Texas’s Death Row

By Anthony Graves, who spent years in solitary confinement on Texas’ death row before being proven innocent in 2010. Yesterday he testified about the experience at a Senate subcommittee hearing on solitary confinement.

On November 1, 1994, I heard the gavel fall and the judge announce, “Anthony Graves, I hereby sentence you to death by lethal injection.” The jury had already convicted me of murdering six people and burning down their house down to cover up the crime. I was completely innocent: they had the wrong guy. I was scared of dying for a crime I did not commit, but I believed in my innocence and hoped someone, somewhere would make it right.

What I didn’t know then was that this wrongful death sentence was only part of the torture I would experience for the next 18-and-a-half years. I didn’t know that I would be forced to live in an 8x12 cage. I didn’t know I would have to use a steel toilet, connected to my steel sink, in plain view of the male and female corrections officers would walk the runs in front of my cell. I didn’t know that for years on end I would have no physical contact with a single human being.

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