Shaka Sankofa Last Words:
Defiance in the Face of Death
Revolutionary Worker #1061, July 2, 2000
Out of respect for Shaka Sankofa and to give our readers a sense of his
political viewpoint, the RW is publishing the complete text of the
statement Shaka made as he was being executed.
I would like to say that I did not kill Bobby Lambert. That I'm an
innocent black man that is being murdered. This is a lynching that is
happening in America tonight. There's overwhelming and compelling
evidence of my defense that has never been heard in any court of
America. What is happening here is an outrage for any civilized country
to anybody anywhere to look at what's happening here is wrong.
I thank all of the people that have rallied to my cause. They've been
standing in support of me. Who have finished with me.
I say to Mr. Lambert's family, I did not kill Bobby Lambert. You are
pursuing the execution of an innocent man.
I want to express my sincere thanks to all of ya'll. We must continue
to move forward and do everything we can to outlaw legal lynching in
America. We must continue to stay strong all around the world, and
people must come together to stop the systematic killing of poor and
innocent Black people. We must continue to stand together in unity and
to demand a moratorium on all executions. We must not let this
murder/lynching be forgotten tonight, my brothers. We must take it to
the nation. We must keep our faith. We must go forward. We recognize
that many leaders have died. Malcom X, Martin Luther King, and others
who stood up for what was right. They stood up for what was just. We
must, you must brothers, that's why I have called you today. You must
carry on that condition.
What is here is just a lynching that is taking place. But they're going
to keep on lynching us for the next 100 years, if you do not carry on
that tradition, and that period of resistance. We will prevail. We may
lose this battle, but we will win the war. This death, this lynching
will be avenged. It will be avenged, it must be avenged. The people
must avenge this murder. So my brothers, all of ya'll stay strong,
continue to move forward.
Know that I love all of you. I love the people, I love all of you for
your blessing, strength, for your courage, for your dignity, the way
you have come here tonight, and the way you have protested and kept
this nation together. Keep moving forward, my brothers. Slavery
couldn't stop us. The lynching couldn't stop us in the south. This
lynching will not stop us tonight. We will go forward. Our destiny in
this country is freedom and liberation. We will gain our freedom and
liberation by any means necessary. By any means necessary, we keep
marching forward.
I love you, Mr. Jackson. Bianca, make sure that the state does not get
my body. Make sure that we get my name as Shaka Sankofa. My name is not
Gary Graham. Make sure that it is properly presented on my grave. Shaka
Sankofa.
I died fighting for what I believe in. I died fighting for what was
just and what was right. I did not kill Bobby Lambert, and the truth is
going to come out. It will be brought out.
I want you to take this thing off into international court, Minister
Robert Mohammed and all ya'll. I want you, I want to get my family and
take this down to international court and file a lawsuit. Get all the
videotapes of all the beatings. They have beat me up in the back. They
have beat me up at the unit over there. Get all the videotapes
supporting that lawsuit. And make the public exposed to the genocide
and this brutality world, and let the world see what is really
happening here behind closed doors. Let the world see the barbarity and
injustice of what is really happening here. You must get those
videotapes. You must make it exposed, this injustice, to the world. You
must continue to demand a moratorium on all executions. We must move
forward Minister Robert Mohammed.
Ashanti Chimurenga, I love you for standing with me, my sister. You are
a strong warrior queen. You will continue to be strong in everything
that you do. Believe in yourself, you must
hold your head up, in the spirit of Winnie Mandela, in the spirit of
Nelson Mandela. Ya'll must move forward. We will stop this lynching.
Reverend Al Sharpton, I love you, my brother.
Bianca Jagger, I love all of you. Ya'll make sure that we continue to
stand together.
Reverend Jesse Jackson, I know that this murder, this lynching will not
be forgotten. I love you, too, my brother. This is genocide in America.
This is what happens to Black men when they stand up and protest for
what is right and just. We refuse to compromise, we refuse to surrender
the dignity for what we know is right. But we will move on, we have
been strong in the past. We will continue to be strong as a people. You
can kill a revolutionary, but you cannot stop the revolution. The
revolution will go on. The people will carry the revolution on. You are
the people that must carry that revolution on, in order to liberate our
children from this genocide and for what is happening here in America
tonight. What has happened for the last 100 or so years in America.
This is the part of the genocide, this is part of the Kmtyw
holocaust, that we as Black people have endured in America. But we
shall overcome, we will continue with this. We will continue, we will
gain our freedom and liberation, by any means necessary. Stay strong.
They cannot kill us. We will move forward.
To my sons, to my daughters, all of you. I love all of you. You have
been wonderful. Keep your heads up. Keep moving forward. Keep united.
Maintain the love and unity in the community.
And know that victory is assured. Victory for the people will be
assured. We will gain our freedom and liberation in this country. We
will gain it and we will do it by any means necessary. We will keep
marching. March on, Black people. Keep your heads high. March on. All
ya'll leaders. March on. Take your message to the people. Preach the
moratorium for all executions. We're gonna stop, we are going to end
the death penalty in this country. We are going to end it all across
this world. Push forward people. And know that what ya'll are doing is
right. What ya'll are doing is just.
This is nothing more than pure and simple murder. This is what is
happening tonight in America. Nothing more than state sanctioned
murders, state sanctioned lynching, right here in America, and right
here tonight. This is what is happening my brothers. Nothing less. They
know I'm innocent. They've got the facts to prove it. They know I'm
innocent. But they cannot acknowledge my innocence, because to do so
would be to publicly admit their guilt. This is something these racist
people will never do. We must remember brothers, this is what we're
faced with. You must take this endeavor forward. You must stay strong.
You must continue to hold your heads up, and to be there. And I love
you, too, my brother. All of you who are standing with me in
solidarity. We will prevail. We will keep marching. Keep marching Black
people, Black power. Keep marching Black people, Black power. Keep
marching Black people. Keep marching Black people. They are killing me
tonight. They are murdering me tonight.
============ ======
"Don't
tell me about a criminal justice system, 'cause there ain't no justice
in it - its just a criminal system" - Mumia Abu Jamal.
'Death by Technicality' The Execution of Shaka Sankofa
By JEFF BLACKBURN
On June 22, Texas governor and Republican presidential candidate George
W. Bush made good on his promise to execute Shaka Sankofa, better known
by his former name, Gary Graham.
"They know I'm innocent, but they won't acknowledge it," said Graham,
who had been beaten and handcuffed to a gurney.
His last words were, "They are killing me tonight. They're murdering me
tonight." He then let out a groan and collapsed into silence at 8:49
p.m., the victim of a state-prepared poison injected into his veins. He
was George W. Bush's 135th death penalty "score."
In the months leading up to June 22, Gary Graham's case had received
the attention of working people, journalists, and celebrities all over
the world. Thounited snakesnds of activists had organized and spoken out against
his execution. Hundreds of them traveled to death row in Huntsville, a
small and isolated town in central Texas, to protest it.
Bianca Jagger and the Rev. Jesse Jackson witnessed the event. Reporters
from major newspapers and television networks throughout the world
covered it.
George W. Bush even felt compelled to make a special statement
justifying his refunited snakesl to stop the execution. He said that Graham had
received "full and fair access to the courts" and piously asked God to
bless his soul.
What made this case so extraordinary? What caused it to become a focal
point for the movement to abolish the death penalty both nationally and
around the world? What did it reveal about the death penalty system in
Texas and the United States?
The answer to these questions-and the thing that made Gary Graham's
case so extraordinary was that it was not extraordinary at all. It was
just another capital case in a long line of capital cases, another
casualty of an assembly-line system. Graham's case was no different
than that of hundreds of others that have been processed through the
Texas death-row system and systems like it in other states.
To understand how truly "ordinary" Graham's case was, it is necessary
to go back in time to 1981.
It was in that year that a 17-year-old Gary Graham, a Black teenager
who had grown up hard on the streets of Houston, went on a crime spree.
Over the course of a few days he stuck up nearly a dozen people for
small amounts of money. He was arrested a few days after his last
robbery. The cases against him were solid. He confessed to them within
hours of being picked up.
Unbeknownst to him, however, he had now become more than just a kid who
had committed some sheet crimes. He had become a police target, and a
convenient one at that.
The police needed a target like him. A few weeks before, a man named
Bobby Lambert had been robbed and killed in a grocery store parking lot
in another part of Houston. The newspapers and television stations had
made an issue out of the murder, citing it as an example of crime run
amok in the city.
There were few clues with which to solve this crime. Although eight
eyewitnesses had seen it happen, none of them remembered exactly what
the killer looked like. The consensus was that he was a Black man with
a thin face, no facial hair, and a short haircut. This description was
made into a drawing, which was shown around the neighborhood. So far,
however, there were no leads in the case.
Enter Gary Graham. Already in jail, without money to hire a lawyer,
guilty of multiple crimes, he made a perfect suspect in the Lambert
killing. The police went all out to make a case against him.
Photographs were carefully prepared. All eight witnesses were carefully
and lengthily reinterviewed. Each was shown what is called a "photo
array"-a row of pictures of different people, one of whom is the
suspect.
Ballistic tests were performed on the gun Graham had been caught with.
The characteristics of its barrel were carefully compared to the
markings found on the bullet that had killed Lambert.
While this was going on, the police started a campaign to get Graham
to confess. They told him that if he would "come clean" about killing
Lambert he could probably beat the death penalty-a message repeated to
him over and over.
The net result of these efforts was next to nothing. Seven of the eight
eyewitnesses stuck by the original description they had given, the one
that had been made into a drawing. The drawing looked nothing like Gary
Graham.
Only one person-Bernadine Skillern, who had seen the real killer for
only two or three seconds, at night, from a distance of about 30 feet
away-could now identify Graham. Her "identification" came only after
she had been worked on for several days with a "special" photo of
Graham. This photo, unlike all of the others she was shown, had a large
black mark on it-the equivalent of an arrow pointing directly to him.
The ballistics tests turned out to be completely in Graham's favor.
There was no match between the barrel of Graham's gun and the bullet
that had killed Lambert. These tests were evidence of his innocence,
not of his guilt.
Meanwhile, Graham refused to confess. He told police that if he had
killed Lambert he would have admitted it, just as he did with the
robberies. As he had done from the first days of the investigation, he
steadfastly maintained his innocence.
This was the "case," then, against Gary Graham-the word of one mistaken
witness, tainted by police misconduct. This was what was taken to a
grand jury and indicted as a capital murder case. This was the "case"
that ultimately sent Gary Graham to his death on June 22.
An ordinary court-appointed lawyer
It took more than the shoddy evidence against Graham to send him to
death row. It took the "ordinary" workings of the Texas death penalty
system, and especially the ordinary lawyers that infest it, to do that.
After an initial flurry of police publicity, Gary Graham became just
another nobody being processed through the system. He had no money, no
real family, no friends. No lawyer volunteered to take his case.
In Texas, there is no system of any kind to ensure that a person in
such a situation receives any genuine legal help. A poor person is
forced to take whatever lawyer the trial judge decides to give him.
There are no legal standards or rules governing the process; everything
is left up to the individual judge.
Judges in Texas are elected, not appointed. They have to raise money
and curry political favor to keep their jobs. The money usually comes
from lawyers.
Lawyers who pay large amounts of money to a trial judge as "campaign
contributions" can usually expect to get something in return. For
lawyers handling criminal cases, that "something" is often a series of
court-appointed cases-which can generate fees totaling hundreds of
thounited snakesnds of dollars per year.
The political favor usually comes from looking "tough on crime" in the
media. A judge who fails to look sufficiently "anti-crime" -a judge,
for example, who presides over a capital murder case that results in a
"not guilty" verdict-is probably a judge with a limited political life
expectancy.
It makes no sense for a judge to appoint an effective lawyer to
represent the accused in a case such as Gary Graham's that could lead
to bad headlines and negative publicity. It makes a lot more sense to
appoint a political crony whose performance as a lawyer is guaranteed
to make the court look good. It makes a lot more sense, in other words,
to appoint an incompetent.
This happens routinely in Texas. Even the Texas Bar Association said,
in a report issued in 1993, that the practice of deliberately
appointing incompetent lawyers in death penalty cases had become so
widespread that "Texas has already reached the crisis stage in capital
representation. "
Amnesty International, in a 1998 white paper called "The Death Penalty
in Texas: Lethal Injustice," had this to say about the court
appointment system: "[We] have documented numerous capital cases in
Texas where defense counsel totally abdicated their responsibility to
their clients, in effect condemning them to death. ... Authorities
in the state have taken no steps to remedy the poor quality of counsel
in these cases."
A quick look at some numbers reveals deep truths about the "ordinary"
workings of the capital appointment system.
Of the 135 people executed during George W. Bush's tenure as governor,
for example, 44 of them had court-appointed lawyers who have been
publicly sanctioned for professional misconduct. The roster includes
convicted felons, disbarred and suspended lawyers, alcoholics, and
lawyers who were too old or sick to try a case.
Two of the executed prisoners had lawyers who slept through most of the
trial. Three had lawyers who served jail time after being held in
contempt for mishandling criminal cases. In 40 cases, the defense
lawyers were so unprepared that they either presented no evidence or
only a single witness during the trial.
The lawyer Gary Graham got, Ron Mock, was and is a prominent member of
this dubious fraternity of sell-out lawyers, or "V-6s" (short for
"walking violations of the Sixth Amendment"), as they are known to
other criminal lawyers.
In 1981, Mock was making over $100,000 per year on court-appointed
cases. He drove a Bentley to and from court every day. He owned a
downtown bar that was popular with the courthouse crowd. Judges loved
him-he moved their cases and made them look good.
He had also been disciplined by the state bar of Texas five times for
professional misconduct. His performance in one capital case was so
awful that a judge ruled "a total breakdown of the adversarial process"
had occurred. His work in another case was so inept that he was held in
contempt of court and jailed for failing to file court papers on time.
He has represented, by his own count, "17 or 18" people who have been
sent to death row, many of whom have already been executed.
Mock was, in other words, just an ordinary court-appointed Texas
capital murder lawyer.
An ordinary trial
The work he did for Gary Graham was "ordinary" too-it consisted of
practically nothing.
He never talked to the seven eyewitnesses who cleared Graham. He never
examined the ballistics reports. He made no notes of what evidence the
state had against his client, referring to "wait and see" what happened
in the trial. He also refused to talk to four witnesses who said that
Graham was with them the night Lambert was killed. Mock's investigator
later admitted under oath that he had been instructed to do no work on
the Graham case since "Ron figured he was guilty as hell anyway."
The "guilt-innocence" phase of Graham's trial lasted only two days. The
state's only eyewitness was Bernadine Skillern. The fact that she was
30 feet away from the crime, in the dark, was never brought up. The
fleeting amount of time she had to see the killer-two or three
seconds-was also not discussed.
The suggestive techniques that the police had used to get her to
identify Graham never made it to the jury either. Mock's
cross-examination of her was brief and pointless.
Like his fellow court-appointed lawyers, Mock presented no evidence for
the defense. The critical evidence of Gary Graham's innocence-the seven
eyewitnesses who failed to identify him, the ballistics tests that
exonerated him, the alibi witnesses who proved he was someplace else
when the crime was committed-were never heard.
The trial was over before it began. In a few hours-the "ordinary" time
in Texas for such cases-Graham was convicted and sentenced to die. He
was now one of the faceless hundreds headed to death row.
An ordinary appeal
His processing through the system did not end there, however. In Texas,
everyone convicted of a capital crime is entitled to an appeal. That
appeal is taken to a court called the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
If a person who wants to appeal has no money, he has to take his
chances with another appointed lawyer. There are no rules, criteria, or
procedures in place to insure that the appointed appeal lawyer will be
any more competent than the appointed trial lawyer. The decision is
left up to the same judge who made it at the trial level, and chances
are that
the appeal lawyer will do no better than his predecessor.
This is what happened to Gary Graham. The lawyer he got, in keeping
with the ordinary course of court-appointed business, did no
investigation into the facts of his case. He never asked for Graham's
side of the story, nor did he bother to question his colleague Mock's
competence. The result was one more hollow effort and a meaningless
appeal. Graham's conviction and sentence were swiftly upheld by the
Court of Criminal Appeals.
Graham had now been fully processed through the Texas factory murder
system. The only thing left for him to do was hope that he could stay
alive long enough to convince a real lawyer to look into his case.
An extraordinary turn
It took 12 years for that happen. In 1993, after being asked to do so
by a growing number of Graham supporters, a lawyer named Richard Burr
got involved in his defense. Burr is one of the leading
anti-death-penalty lawyers in the United States. He is part of a tiny
group of lawyers willing to handle such cases regularly, usually for no
fee and always in the face of abuse from courts, prosecutors, and the
media.
Burr found out what had really happened to Gary Graham. For the first
time, the prosecutor's files were actually analyzed. Witnesses were
talked to. Firearms were examined. Graham's alibi was checked out. A
powerful case for Graham's innocence was put together. The work that
any reasonably effective trial lawyer should have done and would have
done finally got done-12 years later.
It turned out to be 12 years too late. That was because of the state
and federal appeal system in Texas, a system that has been described by
legal commentators as a "stacked deck" for the accused. How the deck
was stacked, and how it was used to kill Gary Graham, is worth some
serious examination.
The first step a wrongfully convicted person has to take to get a new
trial, assuming that he has been able to find a lawyer to help him, is
to file what is called a "writ of habeas corpus."
The purpose of this writ, which has been regarded historically as one
of the greatest legal mechanisms to protect the rights of individuals
and has often been termed by lawyers and judges as the "Great Writ," is
to test the legal validity of a conviction. The state courts of Texas
and the federal courts have had procedures in place for a hundred years
to ensure that prisoners could file such writs.
The idea behind the writ of habeas corpus is simple: A prisoner
develops evidence that his conviction is unjust. He files an
application for a writ, which is really a demand that a court hear the
evidence. The court grants the writ, hears the evidence, and decides
whether he is entitled to a new trial according to established legal
principles.
The actual practice of the courts in handling such writs, however, has
become anything but simple. As the death penalty became more and more
politically popular, courts rigged more and more obstacles to the use
of this simple procedure.
The use of these legal obstacles has allowed the courts to turn a blind
eye to the plight of the wrongfully convicted. It has allowed them to
make the business of killing citizens more efficient than ever.
Nowhere is this more evident than in Texas. Nowhere is the horrible
effect of these changes more obvious than it was in Graham's case. When
Burr filed Graham's application for a writ of habeas corpus in state
court, he was immediately confronted with a legal obstacle-a ruling of
the Court of Criminal Appeals in an earlier case that made it
"discretionary" for a court to even grant a hearing.
Relying on this decision, the trial court-the same one he had been
before 12 years earlier-denied Graham the right to even present
evidence that he was innocent. The circular reasoning used by the judge
was that Graham should have made his complaints known within 30 days
after his trial-never mind that due to the sorry work done by his
lawyer he had no idea what those "complaints" were back then.
The court affirmed Graham's death sentence without hearing from a
single witness or reading
a single report. So much for the "Great Writ" of habeas corpus in the
state trial court!
Graham then turned to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. His
reception before that elected body of Republican judges, which has
become a national laughingstock due to the poor legal qualifications of
several of its members and its determination to affirm convictions no
matter what, was even worse.
In a widely publicized case, the court recently even refused to release
a prisoner who had been proven innocent through DNA testing. Its
reasoning? Letting an innocent man go would "violate the state's right
to certainty in criminal cases." Needless to say, it immediately
affirmed the decision to deny Graham a hearing on the facts.
Federal "processing" takes over
The next step in the effort to save Graham's life in the courts
involved the use of the federal system. Federal courts also guarantee
prisoners the right to the use of habeas corpus. They have the power to
stop an execution and grant a new trial. Under the Clinton-sponsored
"Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act" (AEDPA) of 1996,
however, the use of that power has become so restricted that the writ
of habeas corpus in the federal system has become more of a joke than
it is even in Texas state courts.
As one Houston anti-death-penalty lawyer put it: "This law completely
perverted the meaning of the legal system. It turned the federal courts
into executioners rather than examiners, perpetrators instead of
protectors."
By the time Graham's case got to the federal courts, the AEDPA was
already in effect. Under this law, it was not enough for Graham to show
that he was innocent. Now he had to show the evidence of his innocence
could not have been discovered at the time of his trial.
Since the evidence that Graham was innocent "existed" in 1981-even
though it was never discovered or used by Mock-the federal judge
reasoned that Graham could not even present it for consideration now.
Once again, no hearing was held. Once again, the court slammed the
doors shut on Graham's case.
"This is a great example of what the system has come to," said Burr in
an earlier interview with Socialist Action, "Death by technicality. "
The last real chance Graham had in the court system, state or federal,
came to an end on May l, 2000-the day the U.S. Supreme Court denied
review.
After that, it was up to George W. Bush and the Texas Board of Pardons
and Paroles. Bush passed the buck to the board, claiming it was
entirely up to them. The board, consistent with its long history of
sending to death everyone who comes before it in a capital case no
matter what the facts, refused to even hear the evidence, much less
spare Graham's life.
The Harris County District Attorney's office, meanwhile, provided cover
for these actions by orchestrating a media blitz designed to show that
Graham was an evil and remorseless killer, stooping so low that they
even got a court bailiff to suddenly "remember" that in 1981 Graham had
told him he regretted not killing more people.
After a last-minute spate of legal maneuvers by Burr, the clock finally
ran out. Graham was taken to the death house. Despite physical
resistance, he was killed in the ordinary way, the way that had been
prepared for him by a legal system that treated his case and hundreds
of others as just another piece of ordinary business.
Extraordinary awakening
Gary Graham may not have died completely in vain. The stark facts of
his innocence, his admirable resistance to injustice, and the level and
intensity of public outcry over his fate combined to wake up many
people to the reality of the death penalty in this country.
Support for the system, even in Texas, is now at an all-time low. New
layers of people, especially "liberal" supporters of the system, are
demanding to know what went "wrong" in the Gary Graham case. Perhaps
over time they will see that as far as the system was concerned,
nothing at all went wrong; to the prosecutors, politicians, and judges
that make up that system this was just another "ordinary" case.
To the rest of us, however, Gary Graham's tragic end can never be
viewed as "ordinary." It can only serve as an extraordinary example of
what the criminal justice system has become in this country.
Jeff Blackburn is a noted anti-death-penalty attorney, practicing in
Amarillo, Texas.
"Make sure that we get my name as Shaka Sankofa. My name is not Gary
Graham. Make sure that it is properly presented on my grave." --Shaka
Sankofa