The Trial of Gary Graham: 1981 - 20 Years Of Appeals

Over the next 20 years, the Gary Graham case and its appeals gained nationwide fame. Among organizations that provided legal assistance and other support were: the Texas Appellate Practice and Educational Resource Center, Inc., which provides direct representation for a limited number of death-row inmates; Amnesty International, which organizes worldwide rallies; the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.; the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty; and the Texas Conference of Churches. Hollywood stars, including Danny Glover, Ed Asner, and Mike Farrell, led public appeals. Several Gary Graham Coalitions and legal defense committees were organized.

At a 1987 hearing on Graham's petition for a writ of habeas corpus on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel, District Judge Donald Shipley deemed the affidavits of four alibi witnesses, who had come forward some years after the crime, as not credible.

In January 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 against considering the Graham case on the basis of mitigating evidence of his youth and troubled background. It remanded the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, which concluded that the jury that sentenced Graham to death had not had an opportunity to consider the facts that suggested a lesser sentence. In January 1992, however, the Fifth Circuit reinstated the death sentence. A year later, the U.S. Supreme Court again denied an appeal.

On April 28, 1993, Texas governor Ann Richards granted Graham a 30-day stay of execution only hours before he was to die. By law, the governor was allowed to grant only one such stay. A new execution date, June 3, was set.

On June 2, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals unanimously granted a new stay, pending the outcome of another Supreme Court case involving the mitigating factor of a youthful defendant's age. In this appeal, Graham's attorneys argued that, while new evidence—the discovery of alibi witnesses—had come to light, it could not be introduced because Texas law demanded its presentation within 30 days of conviction.

August 16 brought another stay from the Court of Criminal Appeals less than six hours before Graham was scheduled to die by lethal injection.

The following April, the same court ruled that Graham was entitled to a hearing on his claim of new testimony from witnesses who had not appeared at the trial. Hearings and pleas for clemency continued well into 2000. By then, Graham's case had been before the U.S. Supreme Court four times, and he had seen 33 judicial or executive reviews and seven stays of execution.

On June 22, 2000, after the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 12 to 5 to reject a request for clemency, Gary Graham was executed. The case created a brief stir in the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign by focusing criticism on the high number of executions in Texas under Republican Governor George W. Bush, who was running for and would eventually win the presidency. Bush and his supporters, however, largely deflected any criticism by pointing out that under Texas law the governor followed the recommendations of the Board of Pardons and Paroles.