He told me he hadn't gone to law school to do pro bono work. That attorney didn't even ask me my name. RH: When I was indicted and the judge read the charges and asked if I could afford an attorney, I said no, so he appointed one. And the trial was a fiasco-they'd already decided. They held you for 13 months before you went to trial. OW: And after you were charged, you never even got to go home. RH: They dusted it off and polished it up and lied-they actually lied. OW: So then they go back to your mother's house and take her gun, which hadn't been fired in 25 years, and claim the bullets matched those found at the crime scene. OW: Now, your mother was one of those strong, black, Southern women who believed in authority, that the police were there to help. The bad news is, we're going to charge you with capital murder." When he got back, he said: "The good news is, your alibi checks out. OW: So you figured your boss would clear up the misunderstanding and the police would realize they had the wrong man. When he told me, I said, "Thank you, Jesus." I was at work at that time, and my supervisor-who was white-could confirm that. RH: I asked the detective when this crime took place. But they told me that because there would be a white prosecutor, judge, and jury, they'd make sure I'd be found guilty. It wasn't until later that they said the charges were first-degree robbery, kidnapping, and attempted murder. Mama screamed and hollered and told them I hadn't done anything, but it didn't matter. They took me into the house in handcuffs. RH: I begged them to let me tell her what was happening.
They handcuffed me and put me into the squad car. When I asked what for, they wouldn't say. They said they were detectives and had a warrant for my arrest. One asked, "Are you Anthony Ray Hinton?" I said I was.
After a few minutes, I looked up and there were two white gentlemen standing there.
RAY HINTON: I was cutting the grass in the back of the house where I lived with my mother, in Burnwell, Alabama. Take us back to your arrest, when you were 29. You spent almost three decades in prison for crimes you were not guilty of. OPRAH: Ray, I've been listening to people's stories for a long time, but yours is about the most incredible. As Stevenson-who personally took up Hinton's case 12 years into his sentence and finally got him released from prison after he'd served 28 years for two murders he didn't commit-puts it, the tale is "a textbook example of injustice." I was honored, a few weeks after I finished reading, to sit down with Ray and find out more about what he went through and how, remarkably, he kept the faith. And for the next two days I was glued to Ray Hinton's soul-searing memoir. I was in Alabama interviewing social-justice warrior Bryan Stevenson and noticed a book on his desk.
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