Chestnut Hill College’s Institute for Forgiveness and Reconciliation will host “The Witness to Innocence Project” during its Third Annual Forgiveness Day Wednesday, April 8, at 7 p.m., at the College’s East Parlor, St. Joseph Hall. Join Shujaa Graham and his wife, Phyllis, board members of Witness to Innocence (WTI), as they discuss their lives before, during and since Shujaa’s time when he was wrongfully accused for the murder of a prison guard in 1973, and placed on death row. Shujaa actually met Phyllis, who was a prison nurse, while he was incarcerated and he will speak about life lessons he’s learned, and on issues such as racism, gang violence, the criminal justice system and death penalty.
Witness to Innocence (WTI) serves as the only national organization in the U.S. entirely comprised and led by exonerated death row survivors and their family members. Its mission is to abolish the death penalty by empowering exonerated death row survivors and their loved ones to become effective leaders in the abolition movement. WTI strives to actively challenge political leaders and the public to understand the realities of a criminal justice system that can potentially send innocent people to death row and seeks ways to support death row survivors and their loved ones face life’s challenges upon exoneration.
Shujaa grew up on a plantation in Louisiana working as a sharecropper with his family in the segregated south during the 1950s. In 1961, he moved to South Central Los Angeles to join his family and attempted to build a more stable life. While there, as a teen, he experienced the 1965 Watts Riots and the police occupation of his community. Throughout this time he was in and out of trouble and spent much of his adolescence in juvenile institutions. When he turned 18, he was sent to Soledad Prison where he says he “came of age.” He taught himself to read and write, studied history and world affairs and was mentored by leadership of the emerging prisoner rights movement. He also became a prominent leader of a growing resistance movement within the California prison system.
In 1973, Shujaa was framed for the murder of a prison guard at the Deul Vocational Institute in Stockton, Calif.
“I was framed because of my beliefs and because I was outspoken about prison conditions,” said Shujaa.
Shujaa was convicted and sent to San Quentin’s death row in 1976. During this time, the district attorney systematically excluded all African American jurors and the California Supreme Court then stepped in and overturned his death sentence in 1979. In total, after four trials, which included a hung jury in the third trial, his conviction was overturned and he was released from prison in 1981. To this day Shujaa says that he won his freedom and affirmed his innocence “in spite of the system.”
“We need a government that would be so sensitive to the needs of the people that its every endeavor would be towards building peace and happiness and not preying on the misery of people. And that’s really how the death penalty goes — it preys upon people’s fears,” said Shujaa.
After Shujaa’s release, he organized protests, built community support for the prison movement (less prisons) and protested against police brutality. He and his wife eventually moved to Maryland where he learned landscaping, created his own business, raised three children and became part of a progressive community. Since 1999, when he was invited to speak about his experiences on death row at a fund raiser for the Alabama Death Penalty project, he has spoken to people throughout the world on the aforementioned issues.
“I’ve tried to integrate the prison issue with other movements. My politics go far beyond prison itself, but because I’ve been in prison, I felt a responsibility to try to expose the conditions of prison life, to fight against new prisons, to address how the disenfranchised will be tomorrow’s victims of the prison system. I stand here wounded by the blows of the death penalty of racism, trying to end this awful reality,” said Shujaa.
Shujaa Graham’s lecture commemorating the Third Annual Day of Forgiveness is free and open to the public. Contact Catherine Nerney, SSJ, Ph.D., at 215.248.7099 or forgive@chc.edu for more information.
