Blog Post #3-Anthony Ray Hinton and Walter McMillian Comparison Contrast

 In the postscript chapter of Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy, he presents a situation eerily similar to Walter McMillian's story, except Anthony Ray Hinton had been on death row for 28 years for a murder he did not commit.  He was released from prison in 2015 while Walter spent eight years and was released in 1993.

  Both Walter and Anthony Rae's stories are equally tragic though.  In the True Justice documentary Hinton recounts his arrest, trial, and eventual sentence to death row.  One summer day, Hinton was mowing his lawn when two police officers confronted him about their suspicions.  They asked him about a gun used in the two murders.  While the same type of gun that Hinton's mom owned was used in multiple robberies and murders, there was no clear evidence that it was the same gun.  Unfortunately, like in McMillian's case, Hinton's defense attorney was woefully lacking expertise to handle a case involving firearms analysis.  Without a proper defense, Hinton was convicted and sent to Alabama's death row. 

 Once Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative became involved, they worked tirelessly to exonerate Hinton even bringing the FBI's firearms and toolmarks unit, who testified that there was no way that the firearm was the one used in the murders.  Just like Walter's case, despite the overwhelming evidence proving Hinton's innocence, the courts refused to give him a retrial.  Stevenson had to take Hinton's case all the way to the United States Supreme Court.  In Hinton V. Alabama, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Alabama courts were in the wrong and granted Hinton a retrial.  Like Walter, Anthony Ray's case garnered plenty of media attention but unlike Walter's case, media attention was not enough to grant Hinton's release.

Hinton wrote a book about his experience and has since gone on to be a justice system activist for other wrongly accused, but his situation and how long it dragged out in the court system begs the question, why? There are laws and rules that are supposed to be followed and when there is a preponderance of evidence, only then, should someone be found guilty.  As in Walter's case, Anthony Ray's innocence was blatantly obvious but his case lingered for 12 years in the court system.  It had to go all the way to the Supreme Court even though there was precedent set about Hinton's deplorable defense.  The Supreme Court even stated that Alabama was in the wrong in their ruling, and according to the EJI website, there have been a number of Alabama wrongful death penalty convictions overturned.  All of these cases are linked by race, poverty, or inferior defense attorneys.  Now, one could argue that perhaps death row convictions are a problem only in Alabama, but according to the Death Penalty Information site, there have been more than 170 wrongly convicted exonerated since 1973 with Illinois and Florida surpassing Alabama in the number of death row sentences overturned.  Unsurprisingly, however, is the fact that the majority of these exonerations were for wrongly convicted African-Americans.