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POVERTY KILLS

Gary Graham murdered due to lack of quality (high paid) legal defense, institutional racism and classism.

By KaPonda

Flashes of the distant past clashed with moments of anxiety as I awaited the decision of the United States Supreme Court. The future of Shaka Sankofa had been placed at the steps of this house of wisdom. Certainly, the justices of the High Court of the land would open their doors and hearts and mete out an equitable judgment to this person of poverty.

The circumstances that lead many prisoners to death row are similar, from Gettsyburg Park in Pennsylvania, where Eastern Bluebirds resonate the empty cries of prisoners' requests for due process, to the Great Lakes of iIllinois, where a recent moratorium was placed on the execution of prisoners, to the shores of California, where the three-strike mandatory sentencing law represents the fast-track to hopelessness.

The situation in which Shaka Sankofa finds himself is only miles from the cradle and heartland of the struggle of Texas liberty, the Alamo. In 1981, a 17-year-old, black kid, Gary Graham, was apprehended for and pleaded guilty to10 aggravated robberies during a weeklong, 22-crime rampage. In addition to the allegations of robbery, he had also been charged with a murder outside of a Houston supermarket. Gary Graham denied having committed the murder outside of the supermarket, however.

In Texas, there is no formal public defender agency for indigent inmates or prisoners. Accordingly, the judge who presided over his case handpicked an attorney to represent Gary Graham on each count, including the allegation of murder. Since he was only a 17-year-old kid and probably could not forsee the direction that a murder charge would take, Gary Graham did not fully comprehend that he had been dealt the death card when his attorney was selected. During the guilt-innocence part of the tiral, the attorney of Gary Graham offered no discovery on behalf of his client, and his total defense consisted of a total of two witnesses at sentencing. A(ll that was necessary to raise doubt about his guilt was for Gary Graham's attorney to challenge in the presence of the jury the testimony of the sole eyewitness against him. Had he used this strategy, there probably would not have been a need to petition the High Court of the land. When called on his incompetence, Gary Graham's attorney stated, according to new sources, "There's nothing I could have done that would have changed the result....because it would have allowed the prosecution to tell the jury about his other crimes."

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A pale blankness descended on the horizon as the planetary shift extinquished the sun. The fatal news was now being broadcast from the studios of the local radio station. The Supreme Court had voted down the petition for a writ of civil injunction, and, by a 5-4 decision, attacked the meager justice that remains available to low-income and poor people. The watch had ended. The 11th-hour flury of legal actions by a team of crack attorneys had failed to raise the eyebrows of the majority of justices in high places. His hour had arrived. At 8:49 p.m., under the sacred watch of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, Shaka Sankofa was excecuted by lethal injection on Thursday, June 22, 2000.

As he comforted the family, Jackson expressed how that battle is lost but, "....the war is not over, the war to stop the killing, the war to stop killing people based upon race profiles, inadequate lawyers, mistaken identities and wrongful convictions.''

The court case of Shaka Sankofa raised questions about fairness in the Texas criminal justice system and about Bush's credentials as a ``compassionate conservative.'' Had a preconceived judgment concerning Shaka Sankofa been formed by decision-makers of Texas without just grounds or before having sufficient knowledge of all the facts? Clearly, Governor George Bush imposed a stranglehold of justice on Shaka Sankofa's petition for a reprieve, since cogent evidence which could have cleared him of the murder charge had never been presented during his trial. "The final result," said Lawrence Marshall, director of the Center for the Wrongly Convicted at Northwestern University, "was the execution of a man on the frailest evidence I've seen...."

In the end it tells the larger story of poverty in relation to the criminal justice system and our belief at POOR that; POVERTY KILLS.

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THERAPY COSTS TOO MUCH!!!!
Dee Gray, M.S.W., M.F.C.   Licensed Therapist specializing in advocacy and crisis counseling. Mother, daughter and family counseling. Adoption and juvenile dependency. Literary and creative art counseling. Individual and group therapy. Sliding scale fee. (415) 541-5629.