Anthony Ray Hinton
Anthony Ray Hinton has served one of the longest death row sentences in Alabama's history—30 years—and today he will finally be freed. He was 29 at the time of the crime and has maintained his innocence since his arrest.
He's now 58 years old.
He was convicted in 1985 of two murders that happened that year, but a new trial was ordered in 2014 after firearms experts testified 12 years earlier that the revolver Hinton was said to have used in the crimes could not be matched to evidence in either case, and the two murders couldn't be linked to each other. [...]
"Race, poverty, inadequate legal assistance, and prosecutorial indifference to innocence conspired to create a textbook example of injustice," Stevenson said of his African-American client. "I can't think of a case that more urgently dramatizes the need for reform than what has happened to Anthony Ray Hinton."
Hinton was serving time for the killings of two fast-food managers in 1985. New forensics testing showed the bullets found at the crime scene
did not match those found in Hinton's home.
The state dismissed the charges and a circuit court judge ordered him released. It's hard to imagine what Anthony Ray Hinton has experienced—30 years of your life waiting to be executed for a crime you didn't commit—but unfortunately his case isn't uncommon. According to a 2014 study:
More than 4 percent of inmates sentenced to death in the United States are probably innocent, according to a study published Monday that sent shock waves across the anti-death penalty community. [...]
“This impressive study points to a serious flaw in our use of the death penalty,” said Richard Dieter, Death Penalty Information Center executive director, after seeing the report. “The ‘problem of innocence’ is much worse than was thought."
Find a full list of exonerated death row inmates since 1973 on
The Innocence List. Anthony Ray Hinton's name is
the latest addition.
"The sun does shine," Hinton said as he was released.