Anthony Ray Hinton
Anthony Ray Hinton is an innocent man who has been condemned on Alabama’s death row for 19 years. His case illustrates the gross injustice often found in the administration of criminal justice and the tragic unreliability of capital punishment in America.
Mr. Hinton was arrested in 1985 and charged with two separate shooting murders that occurred during robberies at two fast food restaurants near Birmingham, Alabama. There were no eyewitnesses to either crime, and the fingerprints lifted from each crime scene did not match Mr. Hinton. The only evidence linking Mr. Hinton to the murders stemmed from a third shooting at a fast food restaurant in Bessemer. The victim in the third shooting did not die and misidentified Mr. Hinton as the assailant. Although Mr. Hinton was never charged with this crime, state lab technicians stated that bullets recovered from all three crimes were fired from the same weapon and matched a weapon recovered from Mr. Hinton’s mother. Based on this gun evidence, the state charged Mr. Hinton with the two murders even though there was no other evidence linking Mr. Hinton to the crimes.
At the time of the third shooting, Mr. Hinton was working in a locked warehouse 15 miles from the crime scene. His supervisor and other employees confirmed his innocence but he was still prosecuted for capital murder. Police subjected Mr. Hinton to a polygraph test which confirmed his innocence but the judge refused to admit the test results at trial.
In 1999, the Equal Justice Initiative took on Mr. Hinton’s case. In June 2002, three of the country’s top gun experts testified that they had examined the state’s evidence and concluded that the crime bullets could not be matched to the weapon recovered from Mr. Hinton’s mother and that the state had erred in making that claim.
The trial court did not rule on the evidence of Mr. Hinton’s innocence for over two years and then signed an order prepared by the State denying relief to Mr. Hinton, in part because the evidence of innocence presented was “too late.” EJI has appealed the court’s order and is currently seeking relief from the Alabama Supreme Court.