In the July 31 edition of CBS’ “60 Minutes,” wrongfully accused man Ray Hinton talks about freedom after being convicted of a crime when he was 30 years old.
Attorney Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative shares with CBS’ Scott Pelley what it is like defending an innocent man.
Hinton was convicted of killing two restaurant managers and sent to Alabama’s death row. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned his conviction when he was 57, and he was exonerated because of Stevenson’s persistence.
“We owe them an investigation into what went wrong,” Stevenson says. “I think by failing to take seriously the needs of innocent people who are exonerated, we kind of say we don’t care if we get it wrong. We don’t care if we execute innocent people. And I think that’s a terrible thing for a society that claims to be about justice and fairness to assert.”
