Houston Chronicle, May 2, 2000:

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to hear the latest appeal from condemned killer Gary Graham, clearing the way for a new execution date in his high-profile case.

Graham, 36, a Texas death row inmate since 1981 who now prefers to go by the name Shaka Sankofa, could get a June execution date later this week when Harris County prosecutors and defense attorneys meet with state District Judge J. Michael Wilkinson.

Monday’s ruling from the nation’s highest court means Graham has exhausted his appeals, possibly drawing to a close one of the most protracted legal dramas in the history of capital punishment in Texas.

“This is it,” Harris County Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson said. “He has exhausted all of his appeals in the court system.” 

Despite the ruling, Graham’s lawyers and his backers continued to proclaim his innocence at a news conference Monday, once again offering what they say is new evidence that he was wrongly accused of the May 1981 robbery-murder of Bobby Lambert outside a Houston
supermarket.

The case has received international media attention, with Hollywood celebrities and death penalty foes lining up behind Graham.

Richard Burr, a lawyer who handled Graham’s appeal, was disappointed with Monday’s decision but said he would keep fighting for his client.

“We are close to the end of the line for Mr. Sankofa,” conceded Burr, who added that he is still committed to finding new evidence to get back to court or to “scratch and claw for clemency.”

The focus now for the defense is to find the person who really killed Lambert, Burr said, “to prevent the state from killing an innocent person.”

And while Burr said he has several leads on the identity of the “real killer,” he said he doesn’t have enough evidence to name him.

Graham was 17 when he went to death row for Lambert’s murder. His appellate lawyers have argued that his original attorneys failed to fully investigate the case in 1981 and that there are witnesses and physical evidence that can clear Graham.

But state and federal appeals courts have reviewed Graham’s case more than 30 times and found his witnesses to be vague or lacking credibility.

In addition, the one witness who picked out Graham in Lambert’s death has never wavered in her identification.

Graham, who had a lengthy history of run-ins with the law before the murder, was arrested May 20, 1981, by police who found him passed out and naked in the bed of a taxi driver who accused him of rape.

He has since said he was responsible for other robberies and assaults during a weeklong rampage that included 22 crimes in 1981. But he’s always said he didn’t kill Lambert, 53, of Tucson, Ariz.

Despite those claims, Graham’s appeals have always fallen short. For example, when his lawyers produced some of the witnesses that they say clear him, it was learned that those people knew nothing about Lambert’s killing and could only say they never saw Graham in
the neighborhood where the killing took place.

Burr said a .22-caliber pistol found on Graham when he was arrested did not fire the shot that killed Lambert. But prosecutors countered that they never said that gun was the murder weapon and that Graham used a variety of guns during his crime spree.

Graham’s case did result in a change in state law that allowed defendants to bring claims of so-called “new evidence” to appeals courts. Ironically, Graham’s own case was turned away by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals because the justices didn’t feel it met the legal threshold required for a new review under that statute.

Monday’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court focused on whether a 1996 federal law meant to speed along death penalty appeals applied to him. His lawyers argued it did not and that it would be unfair to apply it because Graham’s case was on appeal before the new law was enacted.

By declining to hear the case, however, the court essentially upheld the ruling of a lower federal court, which said the Anti- Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 did apply to Graham.

And because that law applies, Graham’s chances at further federal appeals are slim. The law requires his lawyers to present evidence that could not have been discovered before trial. Graham’s lawyers have said evidence clearing him was there all along.

But the intricacies of federal and state appellate laws seem to matter little to Graham’s supporters, who have said they simply want a new trial for him.

“All we want is the evidence to be heard,” said the Nation of Islam’s Robert Muhammad.
 
SHAPE community center executive director Deloyd Parker called for community action.
 
“It may have been the Supreme Court’s last decision, but it’s not our last move,” Parker said. “We are going to continue because this is bigger than Sankofa.”

When Graham’s previous execution date was being set in January 1999, he called for violence and asked supporters to go to Huntsville armed with guns.

And while no one at Monday’s news conference directly called for violence, Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement member Njeri Shakur said Graham’s execution would be “met with outrage.”

But Wilson, who has handled the appeal for the district attorney’s office, said Graham has gotten more than a fair hearing and that his supporters know little about the facts of the case, other than what they get from “30-second sound bites.”

“I think that this is textbook case for how the system can be abused or manipulated,” Wilson said. “We try to create a system where there are safeguards so people do have constitutional rights and we don’t violate them and everyone is in favor of that. But (Graham’s)very clever  . . .  I think he’s a prime example of someone who has manipulated the system to the utmost of his ability, and he’s a prime example that our system does bend over backward to make sure the safeguards are there.”
 
Burr disagreed. 

“This is the kind of thing that makes people think that this system is utterly corrupt.  . . .  No judge has heard any of these witnesses testify,” Burr said. “No judge has looked at the bullet, looked at the gun or heard from an expert talking about that bullet and that gun.”