Anti-death penalty protest gets a boost — another exonerated person

With the release from death row of an exonerated Anthony Graves just three days before the 11th Annual March to Abolish the Death Penalty, the crowd that gathered at the Texas Capitol in Austin on Oct. 30 was in high spirits. Graves, an African-American man from Brenham, Texas, was wrongfully locked up for 18 years. He was declared innocent and freed to his loving mother, family and friends on Oct. 27.

Oct. 30 march in Austin, Texas. WW photo: Gloria Rubac

Six men who almost took their last steps to the executioner’s gurney proudly led the annual Texas march to chants of “Texas says Death Row, We Say Hell No!”

The excited crowd of around 500 people was at times spirited and happy yet also angry and militant. It has been exposed in recent months that Texas Gov. Rick Perry was responsible for executing an innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham, in 2004.

His mother, Eugenia, gave a message shown on a big jumbotron screen, thanking the crowd for rallying that day and supporting Todd. “All of us are working together to abolish the death penalty and to make Todd’s dream come true.”

Shujaa Graham was on death row three years before the California Supreme Court threw out his conviction. He is a passionate fighter for abolition who had tears streaming down his cheeks as he told the crowd, “No state in America executes more people than Texas. I’m here, wounded by the blows of capital punishment, but not slain, and I say to you Texas, arise and fight this now!”

The other five death row exonerees who led the march with Graham were Curtis McCarty, who did 22 years in Oklahoma; Ron Keine, two years in New Mexico; Greg Wilhoit, five years in Oklahoma; Gary Drinkard, almost six years in Alabama; and Albert Burrell, who did 13 years on death row in Louisiana.

Dozens of families and friends of those on death row brought signs and banners for their loved ones, including Robert Garza, Juan Ramirez, Rob Will, Rodney Reed, Randy Halprin, Louis Perez, Jeff Wood, Cleve “Sarge” Foster, Howard Guidry, Paul David Storey and Umberto Garza. Reed’s brother also brought a huge container of Texas barbeque to share with the crowd.

Lawrence Foster, the grandfather of former death row prisoner Kenneth Foster, attended even though his grandson has had his sentence commuted to life. Foster, who is 83 years old, told the crowd to never give up, to always fight for justice because that is what saved his grandson’s life just hours before his 2007 execution was to take place.

The only Texas gubernatorial candidate who opposes the death penalty, Deb Shafto with the Green Party, participated in the car caravan from Houston to Austin, filling her car with activists and putting anti-death-penalty signs on her car.

Six cars left Houston’s S.H.A.P.E. Community Center early Oct. 30 with neon-colored posters on all sides of their cars and created a stir at every gas station and rest stop along the highway. Shafto has participated in many protests opposing capital punishment and it is a strong part of her platform.

Minister Robert Muhammad, a regional representative of the Nation of Islam, based in Houston, moved the crowd to cheers when he proclaimed, “America says it is fighting for freedom around the world, yet we have no freedom right here for poor people and working-class people. The government can bail out the banks but cannot bail out our people. They want to execute Mumia Abu-Jamal, but we, the people, must continue to fight to save his life!” Muhammad was a friend and spiritual advisor to two innocent men, Shaka Sankofa and Odell Barnes, and he witnessed their executions in 2000.

“As I always say, it is better to be guilty and rich in Texas than to be poor and innocent. Let’s keep up the fight and abolish this death penalty!” Muhammad concluded.

Elizabeth Gilbert told the crowd that activists can end executions. She began to fight to prove the innocence of Todd Willingham in 1998 after she was given his name for a pen pal on a bus filled with Houston activists going to Philadelphia for the Millions for Mumia rally in 1998. Gilbert was recently featured on the PBS Frontline program and written about in the New Yorker due to her work for Willingham.

Njeri Shakur, a leader of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, was “energized” by the march and rally. “Being among these exonerated men, men who very well could be dead now, was empowering. Seeing all the families fighting for their loved ones was so moving. The release of Anthony Graves was a wonderful victory, but we still have so much work to do. We will win if we continue to protest and educate and organize the people against this injustice that terrorizes the poor. And we must act now to free Mumia Abu-Jamal!”