HEADING: "30 Years on Death Row: A Conversation with Anthony Ray Hinton," by Corey Johnson, published by The Marshall Project on April 9. 2014.
SUB-HEADING: 'They tell you justice is blind. I am telling you that justice can see."
GIST: "Anthony Ray Hinton was convicted of murdering two fast food restaurant managers in separate robberies in the Birmingham, Ala. area in 1985. The only evidence linking Hinton to the crime were bullets the state’s experts claimed matched a .38 revolver recovered from Hinton’s home. Time cards and other evidence suggested Hinton was working at his warehouse job at the time of the killings. There were no fingerprints. No eyewitness testimony linked Hinton to the killings. Nevertheless, Hinton, then 29, was sent to death row. Last year, after years of appeals by Hinton and his attorney, Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative, the United States Supreme Court overturned Hinton’s conviction and ordered a new trial. (Stevenson is on The Marshall Project’s advisory board.) Last month, three experts from the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences concluded the bullets from the three robberies didn't match each other and could not be linked to the supposed murder weapon. Last Friday, Hinton emerged from his Jefferson County cell, two months shy of his 59th birthday, a free man. In doing so, he became the 152nd person to be exonerated from death row in the United States, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. This week, Hinton talked to Corey G. Johnson of The Marshall Project about his 30-year quest for justice, how he kept his sanity during decades of solitary confinement, and his return to an unfamiliar world. The interview has been edited for length and clarity...Q: Do you think those prosecutors deserve to lose their license? A: Most definitely they deserve to lose their license. And the reason I say that, Mr. Stevenson will tell you if you talk to him, the same prosecutor told the newspaper that if I ever got out, he would be waiting on me, with a brand new .38 pistol, and he would gun me down in the parking lot. It’s all in the Birmingham News. Q: How would you improve the criminal justice system given what you’ve experienced? First of all, there needs to be a overhaul of racial diversity in these criminal cases. Second of all, there should be a committee that overlooks every case that ended with the death penalty to make sure the person got a fair trial and was given adequate funding to have experts. Most people don’t realize, I went to trial for two capital murders. Now, the state had every available agency that it needed at its disposal. My lawyer didn’t have anything like that. So the playing field isn’t fair. Not even halfway level. You’ve got to make the playing field level. I think if the state is going to spend, let’s say 500,000 dollars, then the defense should get 500,000 dollars. Imagine if I had had the money that my lawyer knew I needed to have experts. This case would have never got off the ground. But now, here’s the thing that most people don’t understand. They say “Well, you have a right to an attorney.” They didn’t lie about that. They’ll give you any attorney. But is he going to work for you? Is he going to do for you what you need to do? I don’t think so. Number two is, they tell you justice is blind. I am telling you that justice can see. She sees what race you are, she sees where you went to college, she sees economics, she sees everything there is to see. And it all depends on what she sees, depends on whether or not you go back home or not. And when she saw me, she knew I was going to death row. Q: But she didn't see the power of God. A: No she didn’t. And that was her biggest mistake."
The entire interview can be found at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
I look forward to hearing from readers at:
hlevy15@gmail.com.
Harold Levy; Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
