WELCOME HOME BRUH!!! One time for freedom and the fight against injustice: Death Row Prisoner Released After 30 Years for Crime He Didn’t Do!
Anthony Ray Hinton, the former Alabama inmate and Death Row Prisoner Released After 30 Years for Crime He Didn’t Do is at 58 years old a “free” man. Released on Good Friday he spent half his life on death row being the alleged killer of two fast food restaurant managers during 1985 robberies (SHEESH, SMH!). CNN and World Star report prosecutors determined he did not fire the gun, via modern ballistics tests which proved they did not come from the .38-caliber Smith & Wesson revolver found in Hinton’s home or even from the same type of gun (SMH). The charges were dropped though Bryan Stevenson–director of the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative and the attorney of the Death Row Prisoner Released After 30 Years for Crime He Didn’t Do–says he was “convicted because he was poor.”
“Race, poverty, inadequate legal assistance, and prosecutorial indifference to innocence conspired to create a textbook example of injustice.” Stevenson said the “refusal of state prosecutors to re-examine this case despite persuasive and reliable evidence of innocence is disappointing and troubling.”
…#RunTellDat…Stevenson had been on the case for 16 years, the courts initially refused his proposals for the gun to be re-tested which would have changed everything–all those years ago (damn, SMH). Hinton was convicted on February 25, 1985 and found guilty in July of that year. He was sentenced to death in 1987 for murders of John Davidson and Thomas Vason who were shot in the head inside of coolers at Captain D’s and Mrs. Winner’s Chicken & Biscuits in Birmingham. The homecoming is obviously bittersweet for him and his family.
Hinton, 58, looked up, took in the sunshine and thanked God and his lawyers Friday morning outside the county jail in Birmingham, minutes after taking his first steps as a free man since 1985. He spoke of unjustly losing three decades of his life, under fear of execution, for something he didn’t do.
“All they had to do was to test the gun, but when you think you’re high and mighty and you’re above the law, you don’t have to answer to nobody,” Hinton told reporters. “But I’ve got news for you — everybody that played a part in sending me to death row, you will answer to God.”
…that’s #realtalk, SMH. It’s crazy to imagine laying in a cell on death row for that long knowing every day you were fighting for innocence, but this is a reality for many. Now the Death Row Prisoner Released After 30 Years for Crime He Didn’t Do has a new life to live. Anthony Ray plans to spend a few weeks “getting used to freedom” as he “sorts out what he wants to do.” While we happily say welcome home–the fight clearly continues.
#AllLivesMatter
