30-Year Alabama Death Row Inmate Uses Computer, ATMs for First Time

— -- Anthony Ray Hinton spent more than half his life on death row in southern Alabama. Now, at 58, after spending decades behind bars, Hinton is free.

"Thirty years ago, the prosecution seemed deemed to take my life from me,” Hinton told ABC News' “Nightline.”

Hinton was convicted in the brutal killings of two men and sentenced to live out the rest of his days at the Holman Correctional Facility. Now, all these years later, he is no longer a “dead man walking.”

“They took my 30s, my 40s, my 50s, but what they couldn’t take was my joy,” Hinton said. “I couldn’t do nothing about the years, but I could control my joy. ... I kept a smile on my face, I kept love in my heart.”

Hinton was sent to prison in 1985. At the time, Ronald Reagan was president, “Back to the Future” was a box office hit, and in the middle of the night, two Birmingham restaurant managers were shot dead at closing time, just months apart from each other. Then a third victim, another man who survived the shooting, helped police identify then-29-year-old Hinton as the killer.

The Equal Justice Initiative, a team of attorneys led by Bryan Stevenson, pushed for decades to get Hinton’s case overturned.

“[My freedom] means everything,” Hinton said. “You never think of your freedom until it’s taken away from you and once it’s taken. ... So, it means everything to me. You couldn’t put a price tag on it.”

After his release this year on April 3, Hinton was re-introduced to things for the first time in decades -- like his first slice of pizza in 30 years. Hinton now has to learn how live in a world that moved on without him, to learn to use things most people today take for granted, such as a computer or a cell phone. He is also experiencing social media for the first time ever.

“I’ve heard about Facebook and Twitter and that’s about that,” he said.

Stevenson had to show him how to use an ATM machine, something else he had never seen before. Even just walking outside in the rain was a feeling Hinton hadn’t known for a long time.

“Would you believe this is the first time I’ve been in the rain in 30 years? It feels wonderful,” Hinton said. “Oh man, it feels wonderful. Yes, sir.”

For now, Hinton is focused on rebuilding the years he lost. He said his next project is to try to get money to restore his late mother’s old house, now abandoned. “A place to lay my head and call it my own,” he said.

It was this house where police arrested him 30 years ago.

“I came through the front door,” Hinton said, describing the night he was arrested. “Came in and I was screaming ‘momma, momma.’ ... They had me handcuffed ... and she went to screaming, ‘What you got? What’s going on? What y’all got him arrested for? What them handcuffs on my baby for?’”

Hinton said his mother had a .38 caliber revolver inside the home. Police said it was the murder weapon that fired six bullets into three victims.

Hinton’s court-appointed public defender hired a supposed ballistics expert to dispute the prosecutor’s claims about the murder weapon. But the ballistics expert was blind in one eye and had never testified in a case like Hinton’s before.

“When he was being cross examined, I cried for him. They hammered him,” Hinton said. “This man was trying to help me and the fact that he had one eye ... they crucified him. ... I said, 'They are going to find me guilty.’”

Yet, a document prepared by the state’s ballistic experts indicates a number of questions about whether the bullets matched the gun. The defense was never given the worksheets.

“Mr. Hinton actually passed a polygraph test when they first arrested him, passed it, he had an alibi, he was actually working in a warehouse when one of these crimes took place,” attorney Bryan Stevenson said. “And yet nobody even bothered to try and explain how he could be there and commit the crime, they just weren’t worried about it.”

Tom Doll, Hinton’s work supervisor back then, provided Hinton’s alibi. At the time, Doll said, “as far as I know he was sweeping the floor” at work, located 15 miles away from the crime scenes.

“He didn’t do it,” Doll said. “He was not gone long enough to do that if he was gone at all.”

“It just makes you feel somewhat insignificant,” Doll continued. “Especially that particular fact that he was put on death row just seemed totally -- that added salt to the wound, that really kind of shook my faith in the system.”

Stevenson said that there was “no question” that class and poverty contributed to Hinton’s conviction.

“I think had Mr. Hinton had the experts that we ultimately had to bring into this case, he would not have been convicted,” Stevenson said.

Hinton was convicted of both murders and sentenced to death, ordered to spend the remainder of his days in a 5-by-7-foot cell on death row at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama.

Hinton said he had to "sleep in a fetal position because your feet hang over the bed.”

“I literally could lay in bed and touch the wall to the far side," he recalled. "It’s nothing. You only have a bed that is mounted to the wall and a toilet and that’s what I lived in for 30 years.”

During Hinton’s stay, 53 inmates at Holman were executed, some by lethal injection, others by electric chair.

“My darkest memory would be seeing so many people that I got to know be executed,” Hinton said. “They would come get you on a Tuesday evening and if you didn’t have no visitor come, everybody knew they were coming to get you and this is the last time you’re going to see them.”

Hinton languished in prison for years before his case reached an appeals court in 2004. His new attorneys argued that two more restaurant managers in the Birmingham area were killed at closing time even after Hinton was sent to prison.

Judge Sue Bell Cobb was one of the appellate court judges on Hinton’s appeals case who thought he deserved a new trial.

“I had never been so convinced of someone’s innocence than I had in Mr. Hinton’s case after reviewing all of the evidence,” she said. “There was no incriminating evidence. He didn’t have anything from the robbery, there were no fingerprints. ... When you looked at the ballistics expert that the defense had hired, he was woefully inadequate.”

His appeal was denied, but his defense team kept fighting.

“We had exhausted every state court appeal and it was the United States Supreme Court that finally intervened at a point in the process where it is very, very unusual for that court to intervene,” Stevenson said.

In 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Hinton had inadequate counsel and sent the case back to the Alabama state court for re-examination. Just weeks ago, the state of Alabama dropped the case after a new look at the evidence could not match the bullets to the gun and Hinton was released.

But the son of one of the victims, John Davidson, wasn’t happy with the outcome. He declined “Nightline’s” request for an interview, saying in a statement, “All the stories are saying that he is innocent and he is not. He was never proven innocent. He will be judged by God.”

In response to Davidson’s statement, Hinton said, “he entitled to his opinion and his belief.”

“He will see true justice one day,” Hinton continued. “God will show him that I didn’t do it.”

For now, Hinton is living with a boyhood friend and his family, focusing on moving forward.

“Bitterness kills the soul,” Hinton said. “I cannot hate because my Bible teaches me not to hate. I’ve seen hate at its worst and believe it or not, I was there because of hate. I was put on death row because of hate.”