Wow, thirty good years thrown away and he's taking it so calmly. If it were you, what would you do?
see full story after the cut. Source: CNN
Anthony Ray Hinton is thankful to be free after nearly 30 years on Alabama's death row for murders he says he didn't commit.
And incredulous that it took so long.
Hinton, 58, looked up, took in the sunshine and thanked God and his lawyers Friday morning outside the county jail in Birmingham, minutes after taking his first steps as a free man since 1985.
He spoke of unjustly losing three decades of his life, under fear of execution, for something he didn't do.
"All they had to do was to test the gun, but when you think you're high and mighty and you're above the law, you don't have to answer to nobody," Hinton told reporters.
"But I've got news for you -- everybody that played a part in sending me to death row, you will answer to God."
Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Laura Petro had ordered Hinton released after granting the state's motion to dismiss charges against him.
Hinton was convicted of murder in the 1985 deaths of two Birmingham-area, fast-food restaurant managers, John Davidson and Thomas Wayne Vason.
But a new trial was ordered in 2014 after firearms experts testified 12 years earlier that the revolver Hinton was said to have used in the crimes could not be matched to evidence in either case, and the two killings couldn't be linked to each other.
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