Washington, DC - Representative Cynthia A. McKinney (D-GA), spoke on the house floor recently to try and reason with Texas Governor and Presidential Candidate George W. Bush on behalf of condemned inmate Gary Graham.

Gary Graham was convicted of capital murder on the word of a single eyewitness to a holdup outside a supermarket back in 1981, when he was only 17 years old. His conviction raised questions from the very start.

Noting that ballistics tests revealed that Graham's gun was not even the murder weapon, "A federal court has already stated that there is significant evidence to support Gary Graham's claim of innocence," McKinney stated.

McKinney chided Bush's international experience by saying that his "death row experience has put Texas right in line with Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Democratic Republic of Congo as executionists of juvenile offenders."

And now, many Americans are angry tonight, with good reason.

"George Bush has aided and abetted in the murder of yet another black man," says McKinney.

Even though Bush claimed that the Texas State Board of Pardons and Paroles had the final authority of Graham's execution, it was Bush who actually gave the go-ahead.

As of tonight, Texas has executed 134 prisoners since Bush has been Governor. Texas has the national record for executions even though a majority of Texans feel that innocent people have been wrongly murdered. McKinney says that, "the organized extermination of Black men has the stench of a new holocaust."

In previous statements, McKinney has spoken out against spurious recently-released reports by the Department of Justice and the Central Intelligence Agency absolving the United States Government of any responsibility in the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and of the crack cocaine epidemic in Black America.

"Gary Graham could very well have been innocent of the capital crime he died for. There was credible evidence according to Federal Court, of Graham's innocence. But because of the flawed system of justice in America, too many Black men have been victims of state-sanctioned injustice," says McKinney.

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