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Shaka Sankofa (born Gary Lee Graham) (September 5, 1963 – June 22, 2000) was a Texas death-row inmate who was sentenced to death at the age of 18 for the murder of fifty-three-year-old Bobby Grant Lambert in Houston, Texas on May 13, 1981. He was executed by lethal injection at 8:49 pm on Thursday, June 22, 2000 in Huntsville, Texas, aged 36.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Fight the Death Penalty in the USA: Executions in 2000 )〕 Lambert's murder occurred at night in the parking lot of a Safeway supermarket. Although he denied committing the murder he admitted that at the time of Lambert's death he was on a week-long spree of armed robberies, assaults, attempted murders and one rape. He was captured after a 57-year-old woman he had kidnapped, raped and tortured gained control of his gun and held it on him. She then called police. Sankofa maintained his innocence of Lambert's murder from the time of his arrest and throughout the nineteen years he spent on death row. He pled guilty to armed robbery charges. Sankofa's supporters, including Coretta Scott King, bishop Desmond Tutu, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and celebrities Danny Glover, Kenny Rogers, Lionel Richie, Harry Belafonte and Ruby Dee, brought his case international attention, arguing that his conviction was based on the claim that the testimony of a single eyewitness who said she saw him for a few seconds in the dark parking lot committing the murder. The witness contradicts this claim, stating she saw his face three times over the course of 2–3 minutes as she followed him from the crime scene. She was one of 19 witnesses to identify Graham during a crime spree which included 20 armed robberies, 3 kidnappings, 1 rape, and 3 attempted murders in addition to the Lambert murder. The jury did not hear testimony from a few other apparent eyewitnesses who believed that Sankofa was not the killer because they believed he was too short to be the killer. They did not see his face. No other suspects were questioned and there was a lack of physical evidence. Supporters also argued that there was other crucial evidence the jury did not hear and that he had poor legal representation at the time of his trial. At the time of his execution, Sankofa became the twenty-third inmate executed in Texas during 2000 and the two-hundred and twenty-second person to be executed in Texas since capital punishment was resumed there in 1982. == Childhood == Born to Thelma Griffin and Willie Graham. His mother, Thelma, was found dead on the street in 1988. However, until their deaths (both parents are now deceased) they were fiercely sure of his innocence and spent their last years struggling to free him from death row.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Stop The Execution Of Gary Graham ! )〕 A high school dropout, Sankofa was illiterate at the time of his arrest. Growing out of control as a teen, his negative behavior began with nonviolent petty offenses, starting on May 14, 1981. On May 20 at age 17, he was arrested for his first major felony: the series of 10 armed robberies and aggravated assaults during his week-long spree of crime, including the rape of 57-year-old taxi driver Lisa Blackburn, which he pleaded guilty to and faced 20-year prison sentences. On May 27, however, witness Bernadine Skillern identified Sankofa as Lambert's murderer, and on November 9, at age 18, Sankofa was on death row for the murder of Lambert. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Shaka Sankofa」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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