Hinton was convicted based on forensic evidence linking a handgun found in his home to two Birmingham-area murders that took place in 1985. In 2014 the Supreme Court ordered a new trial based on its ruling that Hinton’s defense, which included his lawyer’s use of a visually impaired civil engineer with little expertise, was “constitutionally deficient.”
After state experts re-examined the evidence and said they could not conclusively determine that the bullets that killed the victims came from Hinton’s gun, prosecutors refused to re-prosecute the case.