Houston Chronicle/Lisa Falkenberg: For freed death row inmate, journalism professor is an angel

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Opinion // Lisa Falkenberg

For freed death row inmate, journalism professor is an angel
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Lisa Falkenberg Oct. 24, 2013 Updated: Oct. 24, 2013 10:55 p.m.
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At first, Nicole Casarez wasn't sure she could trust Anthony Graves, but over time, they became like brother and sister.
Photo: Melissa Phillip, Staff

Before she was his rock, his sister, his angel, Nicole Casarez was a journalism professor and nonpracticing attorney who was as skeptical as anyone about whether this death-row inmate convicted of killing babies was really an innocent man.

At first, Casarez refused to even meet Anthony Graves, refused to look him in the eyes. If he was really guilty of massacring children, she thought, he was probably a pretty good liar as well. She wanted only the facts to make up her mind.

In time, they did. As she and her students at the University of St. Thomas dug into Graves' conviction, they watched the case against him crumble and new information unmask the truth: not a shred of evidence linked Graves to the grisly 1992 murder of a Somerville grandmother, her daughter and four grandchildren.

Casarez committed to fighting for Graves' exoneration through investigation and legal work, but she offered another life raft as well: her friendship.

"Nicole became my rock," Graves told me this week, sitting on Casarez's living room couch in a home he considers as much his as his own house. "She steadied the ship. So many had came on board and for one reason or another, I think it was just too time-consuming and they get frustrated with the system and they go do other things." But, he says, once Casarez gave him her word she'd help him, "she never looked backwards. And because of that, I'm here today."

For nearly a decade, Casarez was one of Graves' few links to the outside world. She began visiting him on death row, she said, more for practical reasons at first: "People on death row go crazy," she said. "No use in saving somebody's life to have them be crazy when they come out."

Over time, they became like brother and sister, spending even more time together during the four years he spent in the Burleson County Jail, waiting for a retrial after his conviction was overturned. The mother of three missed soccer games and time with her family to keep her Friday night jail visits 2½ hours away. She once took her teenage son along as a "legal assistant" for a Christmastime visit.

Graves says Casarez's husband, Rueben, gets some of the credit for holding down the fort: "Rueben was the reason Nicole was able to invest the time she needed to help me."

She stayed for sometimes six hours, so long that the guards started offering her jail food. They'd start off with Graves venting. Soon the anger and the frustration would give way to music trivia and Graves dreaming about what kind of car he'd buy when he got out.

Learned about baseball

Casarez learned about baseball so that she could talk Astros with Graves, an avid fan. She paid $500 a year to have the Houston Chronicle delivered First Class mail. She once sneaked an iPod into the jail only to shush Graves as he sang aloud and danced to Marvin Gaye. It had been so long since he heard music, he couldn't help himself.

Casarez took Graves' collect calls every Monday night, sent photos from her family vacations that let Graves live vicariously from his tiny cage. She kept her mother's pink couches in storage for years, knowing that someday, Graves would have use for them.

In 2010, he did. After 18 years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit, Graves was set free when special prosecutor Kelly Siegler and then-prosecutor of Washington and Burleson counties, Bill Parham, declared him an innocent man. The original prosecutor, Charles Sebesta, who hid evidence and elicited false testimony, has never faced consequences and maintains Graves' guilt.

Graves knew he owed his freedom in large part to a woman who wouldn't take a penny for her efforts. He couldn't buy her a car or rebuild her house as he did for his own mother. So, earlier this month, Graves surprised her with one thing she couldn't refuse: an endowed scholarship in her name at her alma mater, the University of Texas Law School.

'Never known an angel'

To fund it, Graves used some of the $1.45 million he was awarded by the state of Texas for his wrongful incarceration.

"I've known a lot of good people, but I'd never known an angel," Graves says of Casarez. "She's so special that when she comes into your life, you're wrong if you don't share her with others."

Casarez says the award "means the world" to her. She got a letter the other day from UT's law school dean who told her she brought "glory" to her alma mater.

"That would have been enough right there," she said.

But not for Graves. He says the big-name attorneys who also worked hard to free him have gotten the lion's share of media attention. But it was important to him that Casarez be recognized for seeing justice through, for standing with him every grueling step of the way.

"It needs to live on," he says. "It needs to breathe every day."
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Lisa Falkenberg
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Past Articles from this Author:

    Falkenberg: Kavanaugh’s outrage is all about entitlement [Opinion]Falkenberg: How can Texas give rapist doctor a chance of keeping his license? [Opinion]Falkenberg bids goodbye but not farewell

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