Life After: Being On Death Row
Life After: Being On Death Row In 1985, a ‘legal lynching’ led to Anthony Ray Hinton being wrongfully convicted of two murders and spending nearly 30 years on death row. He now dedicates his time to preventing others experiencing the same fate The cloying stench of scorched flesh hung in the air as Anthony Ray Hinton was led to his cell on death row, barely 30 yards from the execution chamber. “The smell of someone literally being set on fire – that alone is cruel and unusual punishment,” he says. “I was not prepared for that smell, and I’d be lying if I said I ever got used to it.” Eighteen months earlier, on a hot summer’s day in 1985, a 29-year-old Hinton had been mowing his mother’s lawn in rural Birmingham, Alabama, when he was interrupted by two police detectives. They accused Hinton of robbing a restaurant. It didn’t matter that he had an alibi , they tied the crime, along with two, unsolved shootings to his mother’s dusty, old .38 revolver. Hinton was saddled with an incompetent pu…
