Anthony Ray Hinton

Anthony Ray Hinton (born June 1, 1956) is an American activist, writer, and author who was wrongly convicted of the 1985 murders of two fast food restaurant managers in Birmingham, Alabama. At the time, Hinton worked at a supermarket warehouse and lived with his mother, Buhlar Hinton, at her home in rural Alabama, about half an hour north of Birmingham. Hinton had told his boss that he was going to be on his honeymoon in Atlanta from late June until July 4, 1985 (Hinton has never been married).

Hinton's public defense attorney did not provide adequate counsel. According to Hinton, upon meeting Hinton, he said, "Listen, all y'all always doing something and saying you're innocent." The jury disregarded the testimony of Hinton's boss, who testified that he was at work during the time of the crimes. where he was held in solitary confinement nearly three decades. During his decades in prison, he was supported by his mother's faith in his innocence, as well as that of longtime friend Lester Bailey, who visited him weekly. The Court ruled that Hinton's original defense lawyer had provided "constitutionally deficient" ineffective assistance of counsel, and remanded his case to the Alabama state court for retrial. Hinton's original defense lawyer had wrongly thought he had only $1,000 available to hire a ballistics expert to rebut the state's case on evidence. The only expert willing to testify at that price was a civil engineer with very little ballistics training and limited by having one eye; he admitted in court to having trouble in operating the microscope. On April 1, 2015 the Jefferson County district attorney's office moved to drop the case. Their forensics experts were unable to match crime-scene bullets to Hinton's mother's gun. Prosecutors admitted that they could not match four bullets found at the crime scene with Hinton's mother's gun.

On April 3, 2015, Hinton was released from prison after Laura Petro, a Jefferson County Circuit Court judge, overturned his conviction and the state dropped all charges against him.

Hinton is the 152nd person since 1973 to be exonerated from death row in the United States, and the sixth in the state of Alabama. He said, "Everybody that played a part in sending me to death row, you will answer to God." Hinton filed a claim for nearly $1.5 million in compensation for his time in jail due to the wrongful conviction. The legislature has resisted approval of this payment, as state authorities say that he did not prove his innocence. As of late 2022, Hinton has still not received any compensation from Alabama.

Since his release, Hinton has spoken in various venues about the injustices of the Alabama judicial system and other issues related to his conviction and imprisonment. He has spoken out against the death penalty, calling it a "form of lynching." He completed a memoir entitled The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (2018), and has given readings and talks around the country about the book and his experiences. and concludes that, "his wonderful memoir recreates the ways he escaped from his cell in his head – had tea with the Queen of England, married Halle Berry – and how he shared that possibility with his fellow death row inmates."

On May 19, 2019, Hinton spoke at St. Bonaventure University's commencement exercises and was awarded an honorary Doctor of Human Letters degree. He had previously spoken to the students of the Class of 2019, six months after his release, in 2015. The students had been so inspired by his earlier address that over 100 of them submitted a petition to the university administration, asking that he be invited to speak at commencement.

On May 8, 2023, he gave a commencement speech and was received an honorary Doctor of Letters degree from Emory University. Hinton continues to work with Bryan Stevenson's EJI as a community educator and advocates for criminal justice reform.