Pat Turner, left, hugs Anthony Ray Hinton as he leaves the Jefferson County jail, Friday, April 3, 2015, in Birmingham, Ala. Hinton spent nearly 30 years on Alabama’s death row, and was set free Friday after prosecutors told a judge they won’t re-try him for the 1985 slayings of two fast-food managers. (AP Photo/Hal Yeager)
An Alabama death row inmate will go free after spending 30 years awaiting the ultimate punishment — which fortunately never came:
Anthony Ray Hinton, who was on death row for nearly 30 years, had been charged and convicted in the 1985 murders of two Birmingham area fast-food managers.
Managers John Davidson and Thomas Wayne Vason were fatally shot in two separate fast-food robberies in 1985. While there were no witnesses to the murder or fingerprints found at the scene, Hinton was arrested after another employee identified him in a photo lineup, according to his lawyers.
Hinton was convicted on the claim that a revolver taken from his mother’s home was the weapon used in both murders, Hinton’s attorneys, with the non-profit Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), said in a statement Thursday.
The case’s dismissal comes 13 years after Hinton’s attorneys presented testimony from ballistics experts that determined the revolver from his mother’s home could not be matched to the crimes, according to the statement.
That’s an adult lifetime stolen by a bad prosecution and a bad verdict based on bad evidence.
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