Preface

Summary

On June 22, 2000, Gary Graham was executed by lethal injection in the state prison of Huntsville, Texas, after nineteen years on death row. The event caused an outrage among abolitionists throughout the United States.

Some opposed the execution on the ground that there was doubt about Graham's guilt and that he didn't get a competent defense. Graham was seventeen when charged with the shooting of a man in the parking lot of a Houston supermarket. He was convicted on the basis of a single, disputed, eyewitness's testimony, and no physical evidence linked him to the crime. Two other witnesses, who worked at the supermarket and claimed they got a good look at the assailant, said Graham was not the killer. But these witnesses were never interviewed by Graham's court-appointed attorney and were never called to testify at the trial. Three of the jurors who voted to convict Graham later signed affidavits saying they would have voted differently had all of the evidence been available. It was argued that, given these considerations, the execution was nothing but a murder.

The debate about capital punishment is a moral disagreement. Can it be resolved? Insofar as it is rooted in disagreement about the reliability of the legal system, or about other questions whose answer can be revealed through empirical research, it might obviously help to try to settle them. But that requires some agreement over more basic moral values.