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Sinai Forum: Exonerated man seeks end to capital punishment

Anthony Ray Hinton, who spent 30 years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit, is pushing for an end to capital punishment.

“Why is that we cannot understand that there have been 196 persons exonerated on death row and we still have a death row?” he asked the audience Sunday at Purdue University Northwest’s Sinai Forum.

“I truly believe that we spend too much time hating instead of loving,” Hinton said.

It costs Alabama $2 million to execute a prisoner compared to $100,000 to keep them in prison the rest of their lives, he said.

“It is challenging and it is hard for me to try and beat the pavement and try to get people to understand” that states with death row are no safer than states without it, he said.

“It’s time somebody told you the truth. The politicians don’t care about you.” They just want you to keep putting them in office, Hinton said. “I believe it’s time young people pick up the torch. It’s time we start electing them.”

Hinton’s arrest and trial

“The truth is the state of Alabama did not make an honest mistake,” Hinton said.

He was mowing his mother’s lawn in Birmingham, Alabama, in July 1985 when he was arrested. Two fast-food restaurants were robbed and the managers shot.

As he was being arrested, Hinton told the officers his mother had a gun in the house for killing snakes but it hadn’t been fired in 25 years.

Hinton had an alibi. He was working at a warehouse 15 miles away at the time of the crime. But that didn’t matter. A manager who was shot but not seriously wounded identified Hinton from a photo lineup.

“Your alibi checks out, but he said we have decided to charge you with first degree capital murder,” a detective told him.

“I truly believe you haven’t committed the crime,” one of the white detectives said, adding, “Why don’t you take this rap for one of your home boys who committed the crime?”

Hinton said a detective told him, “I don’t care whether you did or didn’t, but I am going to make sure you’re found guilty of it.”

Hinton’s trial included a white prosecutor, a white judge and all all-white jury.

After Hinton was pronounced guilty, he heard prosecutor say that the right black man wasn’t convicted, but at least they got a black man off the streets.

Life in prison

Hinton didn’t speak to anyone in prison for three years, he said. He was in a dark place.

“Ever since I was 4 years old, my mother taught me to believe in God,” he said. “I wanted to know what I did so bad in life that God allowed me to be convicted of a crime I didn’t commit.”

“I was angry with God. And as a human factor, I have the right to be angry with God,” Hinton said. “My mother had taught me compassion. My mother had told me no matter what a man does in life, that man deserves compassion.”

Hinton was still locked up but found a mental escape.

“I closed my eyes as tight as I could close them,” he said, and dreamed visiting Queen Elizabeth at her palace. She offered him a cup of tea. “Mr. Hinton, will you come back?” the dream queen asked. “And I told the queen I would love to come back.”

That’s when he realized he could leave death row any time he wanted, by using his mind.

Help finally arrives

During his sixth year in prison, a guard told him he had an unexpected visitor. “Get dressed and go see who it is,” the guard told him.

The visitor was a Boston lawyer.

“He looked at me and said, ‘I’m going to do my best in trying to get you home,'” Hinton said. The lawyer offered to get Hinton out on lifetime parole. Hinton refused. “If the state of Alabama is hellbent on executing me for a crime I didn’t commit, so be it.”

“I looked at the lawyer and said, ‘I need a lawyer who believes in me,'” Hinton said. “Always stand up for what you believe in.”

When Hinton heard of attorney Bryan Stevenson and his Equal Justice Initiative arguing against the death penalty, Hinton wrote him a letter. “You probably get letters all the time from men saying they are innocent, but I am truly innocent,” Hinton wrote.

Three months later, Stevenson replied he would look into it. Eight months letter, he visited.

“I need you to hire a white man, and I need this man to be from the South,” Hinton said. Even if the expert testimony came from the best white woman in the country, “her word is no good on the witness stand in the state of Alabama.”

“Here I am, on death row fighting for my life, and now I’ve got to worry about what race a person has to be, what gender, to get a person help,” Hinton said. “I need this southern white man to be the best of the best, but above all of that, I need this southern white man to just tell the truth.”

Three months later, Stevenson had found three of the world’s renowned experts on firearms — one from Virginia, two from Texas. Until Hinton’s case, they had only testified for the prosecution.

All three said the bullets used in the two murders did not even come close to being able to match the snake-killing gun Hinton’s mother owned.

Hinton criticized Alabama Attorney General William Pryor for saying, “The only problem with this case is the man has been executed and we haven’t executed him yet.”

Pryor didn’t want to take an hour to review the case, Hinton said. “I sat on Alabama death row for 16 years because my life was not worth one hour.”

Taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court was risky. If he lost the appeal, an execution date would be set. In 2014, the high court ordered a new trial.

When the prosecution told the judge they couldn’t find the gun, the judge gave them 60 days to produce it. Then they said they couldn’t find the bullets. “We found out they were testing the gun as well as the bullets,” Hinton said.

The prosecution’s expert said the bullets didn’t match the way they did 30 years ago. “They realized they could no longer tell that lie,” Hinton said, and dropped charges against him.

Life after prison

“For the first time in 30 years, I heard the words, ‘You’re going home,'” Hinton said.

“I forgave the men who did this to me,” Hinton said. “I forgave them not so much so they could sleep well at night. I forgave them so I could sleep well at night.”

He didn’t hear words of conciliation from his accusers.

“Every day, I struggle with who am I. You all can see the outside. You cannot see the scars on the inside,” a tearful Hinton said. “No one has said, ‘Mr. Hinton, I’m sorry.'”

“Where’s my justice? When do I get justice?”

“What would be justice? No one has had the decency to say, ‘It’s OK Mr. Hinton, we’re going to help you try and get back on your feet.'”

Hinton was introduced by Purdue University Northwest Professor Nicky Jackson, who heads the Center for Justice and Post-Exoneration Assistance. Jackson’s organization has helped not only free wrongfully convicted individuals but also help them get jobs, housing and other assistance after being released from prison.

“I notice people say you’re free now, but I want you to know I’ll never be free again until the day I die,” Hinton said.

“I live in the house I was kidnapped from,” he said. When a car pulls up behind him, he wonders if it’s the police coming for him.

“Free men do not look over their shoulders. Free men do not look at the door to see if it’s being kicked down,” he said.

Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.