After spending nearly 30 years awaiting execution for the deaths of two Birmingham area fast-food restaurant managers, Anthony Ray Hinton will be removed from Alabama Death Row in the next few weeks to await a new trial in the slayings.

Meanwhile, prosecutors are trying to track down witnesses from the first trial and searching to see what physical evidence may still be available to decide how, or even if, they have enough to prosecute Hinton again.

Jefferson County Circuit Judge Laura Petro on Wednesday ordered the Alabama Department of Corrections to bring Hinton from death row at Holman Prison to the county jail to await a new trial in the 1985 slayings. The judge in October had overturned Hinton's conviction and ordered he be retried in the wake of rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.

Hinton, 58, is to be returned to Jefferson County in time for a Feb. 18 hearing, Petro stated in her order.

Jefferson County District Attorney Brandon Falls said that he expects Petro will set a trial date at that hearing.

Petro on Dec. 11 had issued an order allowing both prosecutors and the defense access to physical evidence in the circuit clerk's office.

The passage of nearly three decades, however, will make it tough for prosecutors to retry the case, Falls said.

"Obviously it's difficult to try a case after 30 years," Falls said. "That's why we're in the process of determining where all the physical evidence is now, what witnesses are available to testify and (gather) any evidence the defense has complied over the years through their investigations."

Some witnesses may no longer be alive, Falls said.

Many of the death penalty cases where convictions were set aside and the inmate was ultimately freed was because the prosecution was unable to put a case back together years later, Falls said. "It is often claimed that the person was exonerated when in fact the simple passage of so much time prevented anyone from re- prosecuting the case," he said.

Chief Deputy District Attorney John Bowers and Deputy District Attorney Mike Anderton are now assigned to the case, Falls said.

Efforts to reach Hinton's attorney, Bryan Stevenson, executive director of the Montgomery-based Equal Justice Initiative, were unsuccessful. The EJI maintains Hinton is inncocent.

Petro in October had ordered Hinton's conviction set aside and for him to be retried. She issued the order after rulings earlier in 2014 from the U.S. Supreme Court and Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals that she should look at whether the lawyer for Anthony Ray Hinton should have hired a better firearms expert for his trial.

Hinton was convicted of killing two fast-food restaurant managers and wounding a third during three robberies in 1985.

Hinton was convicted largely on the strength of the eyewitness testimony of the surviving restaurant manager and expert testimony from prosecution witnesses that bullets recovered from all three crime scenes had been fired by a pistol police found in his home.

A man hired by Hinton's trial attorney to counter state forensics experts testified the bullets could not be matched to the gun, but in stinging cross examination was discredited by the prosecution over his qualifications and findings.

Hinton's court appointed defense attorney had contended that he tried to find a better firearms expert cut could not find one with the limited funds he had. But the appeals courts ruled that the defense attorney did not know that the spending limits for such experts had been lifted and he could have hired a better one.

Hinton was convicted and sentenced to death for the Feb. 25, 1985 shooting death of John Davidson, an assistant manager at a Southside Mrs. Winner's, was forced into the restaurant's cooler and shot twice in the head. The store was robbed of $2,100. He also was convicted in the July 2, 1985 death of 25-year-old Thomas Vason, an assistant manager at a Captain D's in Woodlawn, was forced into a cooler and shot twice in the head. That restaurant was robbed of $650.

Hinton also was charged related to the July 26, 1985 shooting of Quincy's night manager Sid Smotherman Jr., who was shot in the head and hand in a robbery at the Bessemer restaurant. Smotherman survived and testified at Hinton's trial that he was driving home after work when Hinton bumped his car, and when he got out to check for damage Hinton forced him at gunpoint to drive back to the restaurant.

The issue over whether the defense gun expert was qualified to testify in Hinton's case has been going for more than six years.

As of today Hinton has been on death row 29 years, four months and 28 days. He also spent another 485 days in the county jail.