Kenneth Glenn Hinson
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Kenneth Glenn Hinson (born 1959) is an American sex offender who was charged with the rape of two teenage girls. He was acquitted of these charges on April 23, 2007.[1]
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[edit] The case
Hinson was accused of abducting two teenage girls and raping them in a hidden room beneath an outbuilding adjacent to his home.
He was convicted in 1991 of raping a 12-year-old girl, and sentenced to 18 years in prison; he was released after serving nine years. The judge presiding over Hinson's most recent trial, James E. Lockemy of Dillon, South Carolina (Fourth Circuit), is the same judge who sentenced Hinson to prison for that crime.
[edit] Civil commitment controversy
As Hinson's release from prison approached in 2000, the South Carolina Attorney General's office attempted to have Hinson committed indefinitely to a state hospital for violent sex offenders. Judge Edward Cottingham, now retired, found that there was insufficient evidence that Hinson would reoffend, and ordered him released at the end of his prison sentence.
[edit] Trial
On April 16, 2007, a jury was selected in Georgetown County, and brought by bus to nearby Darlington County, where the trial began the next day. Eight days later, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty after four hours of deliberation, spread over two days.
He remains in custody on federal charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Hinson was allegedly in possession of a firearm, specifically, a Hi-Point 9mm pistol, when arrested. A convicted felon cannot own or bear any guns under U.S. federal law; the offense carries up to life in prison.
