Ex-DA Who Sent Exoneree Anthony Graves to Death Row Is Disbarred

Sure took long enough.

"It’s been nine long years since the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found that Charles Sebesta, the Burleson County DA who prosecuted Anthony Graves for capital murder, had withheld favorable evidence and used false testimony to secure a conviction—a conviction that sent Graves to death row. Graves spent eighteen years in prison, most of it in solitary confinement.

Today, finally, a small measure of justice was served when the State Bar of Texas stripped Sebesta of his law license and formally disbarred him.

It was a stunning reversal of fortune for a man who was, for decades, the most powerful elected official in Burleson and Washington counties. Even after Graves walked free in 2010 and was formally exonerated in 2011, Sebesta continued to impugn his character—telling Texas newspapers as recently as last January that Graves was guilty of murder. Until the bar’s ruling, he did so with impunity.

Then, last summer—twenty years after Graves’ wrongful conviction—the bar’s chief disciplinary counsel determined that there was “just cause” to believe that the former prosecutor had engaged in misconduct. This finding followed a lengthy investigation, which the bar conducted after Graves brought a grievance against Sebesta last January. (Graves was only able to do so because lawmakers passed a bill which changed the existing statute of limitations, allowing exonereees to file such grievances with the bar up to four years after their release from prison.)..."

http://www.texasmonthly.com/daily-post/ex-da-who-sent-exoneree-anthony-graves-death-row-disbarred