Anthony Ray Hinton

Anthony Ray Hinton, who goes by the name Ray, was born in Praco, Alabama, in 1956 and was the youngest of 10 siblings. During Ray’s childhood, his father received a severe head injury in a mining accident and was sent to live in an institution for the rest of his life, leaving Ray to be raised solely by his mother, Buhlar. Ray graduated high school and worked in the coal mines for several years before working for Manpower, a labor company in Birmingham, Alabama. When Ray was 29 years old, he was wrongfully convicted of two murders and sentenced to death by the state of Alabama, despite the fact that he had a strong alibi and little evidence connected him to the murders. He subsequently spent almost 30 years on death row fighting his conviction until he and his lawyer Bryan Stevenson brought an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The court ruled that Ray had received a constitutionally deficient defense, and he was given a new trial to review the ballistics evidence. As a result, the state of Alabama dropped all charges against him and he was released in 2015. After being released, Ray published his memoir, The Sun Does Shine, in 2018, and he now advocates for the abolition of the death penalty.