Innocent black man ‘sat on death row for 30 years’ in US

An African American man who spent three decades on death row in the US state of Alabama has been exonerated after he was proven innocent by lawyers.

Ray Hinton, 58, was released from prison on Friday after spending 30 years awaiting execution in Birmingham, Alabama, another example of a wrongfully convicted black man sentenced to death for a crime he didn't commit.

"I shouldn't have sat on death row for 30 years," Hinton told reporters. "All they had to do was test the gun."

“Everybody that played a part in sending me to death row, you will answer to God,” he added. "They had every intention of executing me for something I didn't do."

Hinton is one of the longest-serving death row inmates in Alabama history and among the longest-serving prisoners in the US to be freed, having spent more than half his life incarcerated.

Hinton was convicted for the murders of two restaurant workers in Birmingham in 1985, even though there was no evidence linking him to the killings.

The US Supreme Court unanimously ruled last year that Hinton’s constitutional right to a fair trial had been violated and overturned his conviction.

Prosecutors had been preparing for a retrial but moved to dismiss the case after modern forensic methods did not show the fatal bullets came from a revolver in Hinton's home, or even from the same gun.

Bryan Stevenson, Hinton's attorney and director of the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative, said he pressed the state of Alabama for years to re-test the gun, and for years officials refused. He said the case was symbolic of broader problems with the US justice system.

“Race, poverty, inadequate legal assistance, and prosecutorial indifference to innocence conspired to create a textbook example of injustice,” Stevenson said in a statement. “I can’t think of a case that more urgently dramatizes the need for reform than what has happened to Anthony Ray Hinton.”

According to a study released in April 2014, one in every 25 death row inmates in the United States is innocent. Approximately 3,000 US prisoners are waiting to be put to death.

African Americans are also far more likely to be arrested and imprisoned by police than any other racial group, according to a recent analysis by USA TODAY.

Experts say the dramatic gap in arrest and prison rates reflects biased policing as well as the vast economic and educational inequalities that plague much of the US.

In November, two black men imprisoned in the US for nearly 40 years for a murder they did not commit were freed.

Ricky Jackson, 58, and Wiley Bridgeman, 61 were both exonerated in a 1975 murder after a key witness against them, who was 13 years old at the time, admitted in 2013 that he lied during his testimony.

AHT/GJH

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