Disbarred

The Colombian scientists listening with disbelief at how the various injustices occurred.

By Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (February 11th 2016)

Too Little

Charles Sebesta will never practice law again. Good. The prosecutor secured the wrongful conviction of an innocent man. Anthony Graves spent 18 years in prison – sentenced to death for setting a fire that killed six people. Last year Texas’ licencing board withdrew Sebesta’s licence over his conduct in Graves’ case.

The Board was satisfied that Sebesta had breached its rules. Before prosecuting Graves, against whom there was no physical evidence, Sebesta had convicted Robert Carter of the same crimes. Sebesta ‘persuaded’ Carter to say that Graves was his accomplice. He wasn’t and a day before he was due to give evidence against Graves, Carter told Sebesta that Graves was not his accomplice – he had acted alone.

Armed with this clearly exculpatory evidence Sebesta concealed it. Even now Sebesta refuses to take responsibility for his actions, which included strong-arming an alibi witness for Graves into not testifying by claiming that the witness was a suspect in the murders and could be indicted. That was false as Sebesta knew. The witness refused to testify.

The jury that convicted Graves knew none of this. Sebesta claims that Graves was rightly convicted, despite the total lack of credible evidence and shocking methods used by Sebesta. With staggering chutzpah Sebesta acts the victim claiming that he has been targeted.

Too Late

In 2006 Graves won an appeal – a retrial was ordered, but in 2010 a special prosecutor concluded that there was credible evidence against him. Sebesta’s conduct turned full circle. Once they had helped secure the conviction of an innocent man – now they condemned the prosecutor.

Sebesta was disbarred in July 2015. He chose to appeal. “My opinion is that we presented the evidence we had and felt like it was sufficient”, Sebesta is reported as saying in the Huffington Post. He has concerns about a process he believes has pursued him unfairly.

Among those who disagree is the Board of Disciplinary Appeals, which upheld the decision to disbar him on February 8th. It said that Sebesta had ‘unclean hands’.

Its decision to act against a prosecutor whose use of egregious methods to secure convictions at any price is to be welcomed, but given the finding of the Board, why hasn’t Sebesta been arrested on suspicion of perverting the course of justice?

And when will those responsible for outrageous and preventable miscarriages of justice like that suffered by Graves be held accountable for their suffering too? Should he not be charged with the American equivalent of grievous bodily harm for the trauma endured by Graves? And in this case, Graves risked judicial murder for a crime he did not commit. Why isn’t that considered to be attempted murder?