In an inter­view with Salon, Anthony Ray Hinton (pic­tured, l.), the 152nd death row exoneree, spoke about his wrong­ful con­vic­tion and spend­ing 30 years on Alabama​’s death row for a crime he did not com­mit. ​“They had every inten­tion of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent man,” Hinton said. ​“If you’re poor and black you don’t stand a chance.” Hinton spoke about the inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion he received at his tri­al: ​“My bal­lis­tics expert was blind in one eye. He was paid $500. It came down to, ​‘Who do you believe? The expert with one eye, or the state?’ The dis­trict attor­ney cross-exam­ined my expert — he chewed him up and spit him out.” Hinton described con­di­tions on death row as ​“a sec­ond hell,” adding, “[i]t’s not a place I would wish on my worst ene­my.” Prosecutors in his case con­tin­ued to push for death, even after nation­al bal­lis­tics experts had exposed the inva­lid­i­ty of the foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny they had pre­sent­ed against Hinton. ​“The DA that we have now seems like he doesn’t give a damn about a man being inno­cent,” Hinton said. ​“When you have a death row case, you have to make 100 per­cent sure you have the right person.” 

Hinton’s appeal lawyer, Bryan Stevenson (pic­tured, r.), said “[r]ace, pover­ty, inad­e­quate legal assis­tance, and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al indif­fer­ence to inno­cence con­spired to cre­ate a text­book exam­ple of injus­tice” in this case. Asked what he plans to do now that he is free, Hinton said he wants to tell his sto­ry. ​“I would like to tell peo­ple about what hap­pened to me and share my expe­ri­ence with any­one will­ing to lis­ten. Hopefully, I can save one per­son from going to death row.”

(M. Otiko, ​“Falsely con­vict­ed death-row sur­vivor opens up: ​‘They had every inten­tion of exe­cut­ing an inno­cent man’,” Salon, May 4, 2015.) See Innocence.

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