Biography
Tommy Lee Hines was a Black man with a severe intellectual disability living in Decatur, Alabama, when police arrested him on May 23, 1978 and accused him of raping and robbing three white women. Hines could not read or write, yet prosecutors used a written confession against him. His case prompted major Southern Christian Leadership Conference demonstrations and Ku Klux Klan counterprotests. An all-white jury convicted him in October 1978 and imposed a 30-year sentence. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the conviction on March 18, 1980. After a jury found him permanently incompetent to stand trial, the court transferred him from penal custody to the Alabama state-hospital system on November 24, 1980. The prosecution was finally dismissed in 1993.
The October 27, 1978 Militant reports an October 13 verdict in Cullman resulting in a thirty-year sentence. This supports October 1978 sentencing at month precision; the verdict day is not independently treated as the sentencing day. The article attributes the defense challenge to a coerced confession and describes SCLC mobilization and Klan intimidation around the trial.
