VICTIM CALLED DRUG DEALER; ACTIVISTS SAY ISSUE IGNORED AT GRAHAM'S
MURDER TRIAL

Civil rights leaders decried state and federal officials yesterday for
not considering evidence that Bobby Lambert, the Houston man whose 1981
murder sent Gary Graham to the death chamber in June, was a known drug
trafficker scheduled to testify against his supplier shortly before his
death.

Martin Luther King III, Dick Gregory and the Rev. Al Sharpton voiced
their concerns in a news conference at a hotel in Arlington, Va., and
requested that Attorney General Janet Reno investigate whether the
information was improperly withheld.

Before Lambert was murdered, he had been subpoenaed by Oklahoma
prosecutors to testify before a federal grand jury against his drug
supplier, said Richard Burr and Jack Zimmermann, who defended Graham
during his appeals until his death.

In exchange for his testimony, charges against Lambert were dismissed,
said Burr, who noted that Graham's initial legal team knew of Lambert's
drug ties and did not introduce the information during the trial. The
original police report of Lambert's murder details his involvement in a
federal drug operation, Zimmermann said.

"The lawyers had leads on the information from police reports," Burr
said. "But they did not pursue it. There was no word about it during
the trial because they did very little investigation of anything --
they failed to investigate alibi witnesses."

However, Harris County Assistant District Attorney Roe Wilson said the
defense could not use the information because it wasn't "live
evidence."

"You can't just bring in character evidence," she said. "That has
nothing to do with Gary Graham's guilt or innocence. There's absolutely
no relevance about the victim's background."

But Zimmermann, who introduced the evidence to the Texas Board of
Pardons and Paroles, disagreed.

Prosecutors said Graham's motive was robbery, he said. But if the court
had known of Lambert's drug connection and the $6,000 left in his back
pocket the night he was murdered, it would have raised reasonable doubt
in Graham's initial trial, Zimmermann said. "It damn sure should have
been raised," he said. "When he [Graham] says, `It isn't me," it
[background] makes a difference." A victim's background does not give
criminals a license to kill, Wilson countered.

"It's similar to the old-type thinking that people deserve to be raped
because they weren't nice or were promiscuous," she said. "You don't
get to go around killing people because they did a bad thing.

"Every court that looked at this said he was the person who committed
this and he did receive a fair trial," Wilson said. "Gary Graham shot
him."

But Burr, Zimmerman and civil rights leaders nationwide said they have
no intention of dropping their argument that Graham did not receive a
fair trial.

Gregory and King said they will continue to press the issue. King said
he will meet with Reno tomorrow morning before heading to Austin for a
news conference Tuesday. Letters were also mailed Wednesday to Gov.
George W. Bush and state Attorney General John Cornyn in support of a
moratorium on capital punishment in Texas, where 227 Death Row inmates
have been executed since 1982, King said.

"We know how to force an issue out," Gregory said, adding that he won't
hesitate to use "civil disobedience" to get his points across.

"If they have to admit that this is true," he said, "that'll end
capital punishment in America. It will be the first time that the
American public has witnessed a case where the wrong person has been
[put to death]."