It was a ‘legal lynching’: after decades behind bars Anthony Ray Hinton was proved innocent. He speaks today at the Peace and Justice Summit in Montgomery – where America’s first lynching memorial just opened

It was nothing less than a lynching – a legal lynching – but a lynching all the same. The anger I had tried so hard to stuff down and pray away was back in full force.

My only crime was being born black, or being born black in Alabama. Everywhere I looked in this courtroom, I saw white faces – a sea of white faces. Wood walls, wood furniture and white faces. The courtroom was impressive and intimidating. I felt like an uninvited guest in a rich man’s library.

It’s hard to explain exactly what it feels like to be judged. There’s a shame to it. Even when you know you’re innocent. It still feels like you are coated in something dirty and evil. It made me feel guilty. It made me feel like my very soul was put on trial and found lacking.

When it seems like the whole world thinks you’re bad, it’s hard to hang on to your goodness. I was trying, though. The Lord knows I was trying.

I had been all over the Birmingham newspapers from the time of my arrest and then throughout the trial. The press had judged me guilty from the second I had stepped out of my mama’s yard. So had the police detectives and the experts and the prosecutor – a sorry-looking man with a weak chin, saggy jowls and a pallor that made it look like he had never worked a day outside in his life.

Now, if I had to judge anyone as evil in that courtroom, it would have been prosecutor McGregor. There was a meanness that came out of his small, close-set eyes – a hatred that was hard and edgy and brittle. He looked like he could snap at any moment. Like some sort of rabid weasel. If he could have executed me right then and there, he would have done so and then gone about having his lunch without further thought.

And then there was Judge Garrett. He was a large man; even in his loose black robe, he looked overstuffed and uncomfortable. He had a ruddy color to his cheeks. He preened and puffed and made a big show out of everything, but it was all a farce.

Oh, sure, they all went through the motions. For almost two weeks, they paraded out witnesses and experts and walked us through the chain of custody and exhibits A to Z, all of which I guess gave legitimacy to what was already a foregone conclusion.

I was guilty.

Hell, as far as the police and the prosecutor and the judge and even my own defense attorney were concerned, I was born guilty.

Black, poor, without a father most of my life, one of 10 children – it was actually pretty amazing I had made it to the age of 29 without a noose around my neck.

But justice is a funny thing, and in Alabama, justice isn’t blind. She knows the color of your skin, your education level and how much money you have in the bank.

I may not have had any money, but I had enough education to understand exactly how justice was working in this trial and exactly how it was going to turn out. The good old boys had traded in their white robes for black robes, but it was still a lynching.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Anthony Ray Hinton: ‘My only crime was being born black, or being born black in Alabama.’ Photograph: Mark Chilvers/The Guardian

“Your Honor, the state rests.”



“Alright, any witnesses for the defense?”

I watched incredulously as my attorney declined to question the second bailiff, who had just lied about me under oath. I never told either bailiff that I knew how to get one over on a polygraph test.

I had spent almost two years waiting for my trial – purposefully not talking to anyone about anything to do with my case – and now supposedly in the hallway outside the courtroom, I had confessed to a bailiff that I had cheated to pass my polygraph, a polygraph the state wouldn’t allow to be admitted because it had proven that I was innocent? It didn’t make sense. None of it made sense.

My attorney turned away from the judge and looked at me. “Do you want to testify?”

I could see the bailiff smirking as he got out of the witness stand. Did I want to testify? They were about to sentence me to death, and nobody was speaking up on my behalf. There were things that needed to go on the record.

My wrists were shackled and cuffed together, a heavy chain linking them to the leg irons around my ankles. For a moment, I imagined wrapping that chain around all their necks, but then I unclenched my fists and placed the palms of my hands together as if to pray.

I wasn’t a murderer. Never had been, never would be. I looked over at the jury, at McGregor, who stared back at me with hatred and self-righteousness, at the judge, who looked overheated and bored. I had spent a good many years testifying for God in church, and now it was time to testify for myself in this courtroom.

I nodded at my attorney. “Yes,” I said, a bit louder than I meant to. Inside my head I was screaming hell yes, and I accidentally banged my chains against the table as I stood up from my chair.

I walked up to the witness stand and turned around and looked out over the courtroom. I was happy to be able to see my mom and face her eye to eye. She smiled at me, and I could feel my heart tighten. God, how I was going to miss her.



I smiled back at my mom, and then I looked over at McGregor. He had been glaring at me for two weeks. It was a famous tactic of his. Stare at the defendant until he cowers. Show him who’s the alpha dog.

Well, I wasn’t a dog, and I wasn’t about to cower. On the inside, I was scared to death. I wanted to go home. I didn’t want to die. But on the outside, I had to be strong. For my mom. For my friends.

Martin Luther King once said: “A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.” So I sat with my back as straight as possible in that courtroom, and when McGregor stared at me, I straightened my back even more and stared right into his eyes.

He was trying to ride me, all right, trying to kill me. And I wasn’t going to make it any easier for him, or for any of them, than it already was.

“Judge,” my attorney began, “let me make aware to the court that Mr Hinton has requested the opportunity to testify. I have no particular idea of the subject matter of testimony, so there’s no way of questioning him. I don’t see how it could make any difference if he just testifies.”

He didn’t know the subject matter? The subject matter was this court just convicted me of two cold-blooded murders without any evidence. The subject matter is my attorney just let them find me guilty of two capital offenses based on a third attempted murder that happened while I was at work. The subject matter was my attorney hired a ballistics expert who could hardly see and who was crucified on the stand. The subject matter was the state of Alabama wanted to strap me to Yellow Mama and murder me for crimes I didn’t commit.

The subject matter was somebody was trying to kill me and I was fighting for my life. That was the subject matter.

I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and said the same prayer I had prayed in my head a thousand times. Dear God, let them know the truth of things. Let them see into my mind and my heart and the truth. Bless the judge. Bless the DA. Bless the victims’ families who are in pain. Dear God, let there be justice. Real justice.

What do you say to a man when you find out he didn’t do it?

It was time for the judge to sentence me. This was my fate from the second they arrested me. Someday they would know I didn’t do it. And then what? What do you say to a man when you find out he didn’t do it? What would they all say then? I sat up as straight as I could. I wasn’t going to beg for my life.

“I’m not worried about that death chair. You can sentence me to it, but you can’t take my life. It don’t belong to you. My soul, you can’t touch it.”

It was a brief recess. Just three hours until they were bringing me back into that courtroom of rich wood and white faces for the last time. I listened as my attorney made one last attempt to object to them trying me for two capital offenses that were only related to each other by circumstance and not related to me by any evidence whatsoever. Somehow, the state of Alabama was able to consolidate the cases, relate them to a third and put the death penalty on the table. This was the real capital offense.

The judge banged his gavel. Cleared his throat.

“It is the judgment of the court that the defendant, Anthony Ray Hinton, in each of these cases is guilty of the capital offense in accordance with the verdict of the jury in each of these cases. And it is the judgment of the court and the sentence of the court that the defendant, Anthony Ray Hinton, suffer death by electrocution on a date to be set by the Alabama supreme court pursuant to Alabama Rules of Appellate Procedure 8-D (1).

“The sheriff of Jefferson County, Alabama, is directed to deliver the defendant, the said Anthony Ray Hinton, into the custody of the director of the department of corrections and institutions at Montgomery, Alabama, and the designated electrocution shall, at the proper place for the electrocution of one sentenced to suffer death by electrocution, cause a current of electricity of sufficient intensity to cause death and the application and continuance of such current to pass through the body of said Anthony Ray Hinton until the said Anthony Ray Hinton is dead.”

I dropped my head. Judge Garrett banged his gavel, and my attorney said some things about an appeal, but my stomach was in my throat and there was a buzzing in my ears like a swarm of bees had been let loose in that courtroom.

I thought I heard my mom crying as if in pain, and I looked back to see Dollie and our Rosemary circled around her.

The bailiffs were leading me toward the door that led out the back of the courtroom, but I turned and started to walk toward my mom. One of the bailiffs grabbed my arm below the shoulder, and I could feel each of his fingers digging in hard. There was no going to her. There was no way for me to comfort her.

They would kill me if they could. I couldn’t let them. I needed to get back to my mom, and she needed to get me back. I was her baby. Dear God, I was her baby, and I was innocent.

I watched as if underwater as my friend Lester and my mom both stood. I saw the tears on Lester’s face, and my mom reached her arms out to me just as they pulled me through the door. It was all too much for one man to bear.

Dear God, please let the truth be known. Dear God, do not let me die this way. Dear God, I am innocent.

Dear God, protect my mom.

I am innocent.

I am innocent.

God have mercy on my soul.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Anthony Ray Hinton is greeted by family outside the Jefferson County jail in Birmingham, Alabama on 3 April 2015. Photograph: Marvin Gentry/Reuters

I never saw my mom again as a free man. She died in September 2002, 17 years into my incarceration.



It took an excruciating legal process, the extraordinary help of my friend Lester and my lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, and another 13 years before the US supreme court vacated my conviction and the charges against me were finally dropped.

I had been on death row for a crime I didn’t commit for nearly 30 years.

I now live in my mom’s house, the house I grew up in. People ask me how I can stay in Alabama. Why wouldn’t I leave? Alabama is my home. I love Alabama – the hot days in the summer and the thunderstorms in winter. I love the smell of the air and the green of the woods. Alabama has always been God’s country to me, and it always will be.

I love Alabama, but I don’t love the state of Alabama. Since my release, not one prosecutor, or state attorney general, or anyone having anything to do with my conviction has apologized. I doubt they ever will.



I forgive them. I made a choice after the first difficult few weeks of freedom, when everything was new and strange and the world didn’t seem to make sense to me. I chose to forgive. I chose to stay vigilant to any signs of anger or hate in my heart.

They took 30 years of my life. If I couldn’t forgive, if I couldn’t feel joy, that would be like giving them the rest of my life.

The rest of my life is mine.

Alabama took 30 years.

That was enough.

