Anthony Hinton Story from Alabama NewsCenter on Vimeo.

Anthony Ray Hinton lived on Alabama’s Death Row for nearly 30 years in a 5-by-7-foot cell he calls a cage. A toilet and a bed attached to the wall were his only “furniture.”

During that time, the state executed 53 members of his prison “family.” In the days of “Yellow Mama,” the stench from the charred flesh of inmates who had been electrocuted filled his nostrils. Court after court rejected the legal arguments seeking to have his capital murder conviction overturned.

Thanks to new testing on a gun taken from his mother’s home, Anthony Hinton walked free April 3 from the Jefferson County Jail after nearly 30 years. Bernard Troncale Photos.

The toughest call ever

But Hinton’s worst moment by far came Sept. 22, 2002. That’s the day his mother, Beulah Hinton, died.

“Being turned down over and over (by courts) had no comparison to getting a phone call that your mother that you loved and respected had passed,” Hinton says. “For me, it was even harder because I shouldn’t have ever been in prison.”

Hinton, 59, has lost half of his life to Death Row. He walked free on April 3 from the Jefferson County Jail, where he was waiting to be retried in the 1985 shooting deaths of two restaurant managers. New testing on the Smith & Wesson .38 special taken from his mother’s home when Hinton was arrested was unable to match crime scene bullets to the gun or even to a single gun. Prosecutors told a judge they wouldn’t retry Hinton.

While Hinton’s release was joyous and tear-filled, his lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, says: “No one should be confused about this. This is also a tragedy. We took 30 years of his life and we can’t give it back.”

First moments of freedom

Hinton’s first day of freedom came on Good Friday, just before Easter. He had a visit to make – to his mother’s grave. At the cemetery, Hinton says, he talked to her.

Anthony Ray Hinton is released from prison on April 3 and is surrounded by friends and family. Bernard Troncale Photos.

“I knew when she passed … if anybody was going to be in God’s ear, she was in God’s ear 24/7. He finally said ‘OK, if it’ll make you shut up, I’m going to get him out of here,’” Hinton says.

“The first thing I told her is, ‘Mama, you know I’m here. I’m out. Thank you for talking on my behalf.’ I apologized to her for not being there for her,” Hinton says, struggling to keep his composure as his eyes fill with tears.

“I didn’t just lose my mother. I lost my best friend,” he says. “I can’t get over the fact I wasn’t there and I should have been.”

His mother’s death is the largest part of a pain that tormented him through almost three decades on Death Row.

“You wake up with it 365 days a year,” Hinton says. “It was more excruciating for me because I was there for something I didn’t do.”

“Every day, every night, you lay down with it, you wake up with it,” Hinton says.

There would be times of joy – “I probably had the best moment when Auburn beat Alabama in the last second” (the “Kick Six” football game in 2013) – but the joy never lasted long. The string of 53 executions made sure of that.

Relying on humor to survive

Condemned inmates know weeks in advance of their execution date, Hinton says. “You try your best to get them not to focus on that particular issue but you can’t.”

On the night of an execution, inmates would watch vans roll in with family members of victims and inmates who would witness the death sentence being carried out. Around midnight, Death Row inmates would start shaking their cell bars and clanging on them.

“That was to let the condemned know we were still with him,” Hinton says. “We didn’t know if he had family there in his behalf. We wanted him to know that this family was still with him.”

Every execution was a reminder to the Death Row inmates of their own impending date with death.

While on Death Row, Hinton (r), says he relied on humor to keep him going. Bernard Troncale Photos.

Hinton says he relied on his sense of humor to help suppress the pain. “Had I not had that, I probably would have took the route of hanging myself.”

His sense of humor and his belief that eventually a court would rule in his favor and free him kept Hinton going through the dark times.

Freedom was a long time coming.

How it all began

Thirty years ago, prosecutors built their case on ballistics evidence they said showed Hinton’s gun was used in both murders and a similar crime, for which Hinton was not charged, in which the victim survived. No physical evidence from any of the scenes linked Hinton to the crimes, and he passed a polygraph test, which wasn’t allowed into evidence.

He also had an alibi ­– testimony that he was working in a secure warehouse 15 miles from the scene of the crime in which the victim survived. But the victim identifying Hinton as his shooter, as well as the failure of Hinton’s ballistics expert to rebut prosecutors’ claims about the bullets, resulted in Hinton’s conviction and two death sentences. Alabama appeals courts upheld the verdict.

Hinton’s breakthrough finally came last year when the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a new trial, ruling unanimously that his original lawyer was “constitutionally deficient.” The lawyer wrongly believed the court would provide only $1,000 to hire a ballistics expert to counter the state’s forensic evidence.

Hinton’s lawyer hired an “expert” who was blind in one eye and had little experience with ballistics. He never test-fired Hinton’s gun to compare those bullets to the slugs that had been recovered from the three crime scenes. He didn’t know how to turn on a microscope at the state Department of Forensic Sciences and had to ask for help repeatedly. He admitted that for much of his analysis of the bullets, he couldn’t even see them under the microscope.

Bryan Stevenson is the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. Bernard Troncale Photos.

The Equal Justice Initiative

Stevenson, executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) in Montgomery, took on Hinton’s case in 1999. He hired three nationally recognized experts who almost always testify for the prosecution to conduct ballistics tests. In 2002, they testified they could not match the recovered slugs to any gun, nor could they match Hinton’s gun to any of the six bullets.

Yet, a judge refused to overturn Hinton’s conviction or death sentence.

“It’s still unconscionable to me we went to them 16 years ago and said, ‘Here’s the evidence, just test it, see for yourself.’ And they refused to do it,” Stevenson says.

“The state of Alabama is just so resistant to doing the right thing, even when the evidence is clear, that I was never confident we were going to get what we were going to get until it actually happened,” he says of Hinton’s release.

Stevenson wonders why the state isn’t setting up a conviction integrity unit “to make sure there are no more innocent people on Death Row.”

“I don’t know why people aren’t doing soul-searching and instituting reform efforts, putting together panels and evaluating procedures and looking harder at the way things went wrong,” he says.

Hinton’s long road to freedom was cratered with crushing court defeats. One of the most discouraging came in 2006 when the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals voted 3-2 to uphold Hinton’s conviction. Judge Sue Bell Cobb, who would become the Alabama chief justice, dissented, along with current Supreme Court Justice Greg Shaw.

“It was clear to me,” Cobb says. “It was one of those cases I was absolutely convinced of his innocence.”

Hinton (l) confers with Stevenson, whom he calls “the best lawyer in the world.” Bernard Troncale Photos.

“He had an absolute rock solid alibi,” she says. “He was working 16 miles away. He had a white supervisor testify when he clocked in and out. His car was on a security camera.”

“What he had against him was an ID by a witness, which as experts know can be unreliable.”

That testimony, as well as the ballistics evidence, doomed Hinton at trial. Cobb says faulty eye witness testimony and ballistics evidence are “the two areas where there’s the most reason for a wrongful conviction.”

Waiting on judgment

Jason Davidson, the son of John Davidson, who was murdered in one of the robberies, does not believe Hinton is innocent. In a statement to ABC’s “Nightline” after Hinton was freed, Davidson said: “All the stories are saying that he is innocent and he is not. He was never proven innocent. He will be judged by God.”

That’s fine with Hinton. He, too, is counting on God’s judgment.

“There’s a higher power who will deal with those that did me wrong,” Hinton says.

Stevenson and Cobb say Hinton deserves an apology from the state, as well as restitution.

“Frankly, when somebody does something to you that’s wrong, that’s illegal, that’s unconstitutional, and they don’t acknowledge it and apologize for it, it adds to the injury,” Stevenson says. “It adds to the pain of that. So I think there ought to be accountability.”

Says Cobb: “If anybody deserves restitution, Mr. Hinton does.”

Hinton says an apology would make him feel better, but if he doesn’t get one “it won’t stop me from being happy.”

“That scar, that pain, I don’t know if it will ever heal. So all I can do is just take one day at a time and deal with it.” Anthony Ray Hinton (r). Bernard Troncale Photos.

Even with his happiness, Hinton says he continues to grapple with pain. He notes that the state hasn’t offered to pay for counseling.

“I can’t afford to go see a doctor. That scar, that pain, I don’t know if it will ever heal,” he says. “So all I can do is just take one day at a time and deal with it.”

In his first two months of freedom, Hinton is having to adjust in ways large and small. He is catching up to three decades of technology – laptop computers and tablets, cellphones, social media, GPS navigation systems in cars, and the like. And he’s getting used to being free – to sitting outside for hours, to walking for exercise every morning, even to standing in the rain, something he didn’t experience for almost 30 years.

“The first drop of rain that fell on me I was in Montgomery. I didn’t want to go in. I wanted to get wet, just like a little kid again. Yesterday it rained, and I got out in the rain again,” he says. “The coolness of it falling on me just feels wonderful. I hope it rains tomorrow, today.”

Hinton is trying his hardest not to be bitter. “They may have took 30 years of my life but they didn’t take the joy.”

That joy, and his belief that God has given him another chance to appreciate what he had taken for granted before his death sentence, offer Hinton some solace.

“I didn’t appreciate a bird flying up on that window,” he says, gesturing to the EJI conference room windows. “Now, if a bird fly on that window, let him sit there. He ain’t hurting no one. The breeze that we feel from the air that he (God) give us, we take it for granted. So now I embrace things I never embraced before.

“I don’t even have time to hate. I have time to try to heal me.”

More on Bryan Stevenson’s work with the Equal Justice Initiative can be found here.