By Anthony Ray Hinton
With Lara Love Hardin
St. Martin’s Press
2018
269 pages Memoir
“The kind of justice a criminal defendant has cannot depend
on how much money he has.”
The Sun Does Shine
is Ray Hinton’s memoir of his 30 years on death row—waiting to die for crimes
he did not commit. His only crime was being born Black in Alabama. Hinton was
accused of robbing and murdering restaurant managers during the same time that he
was at work as a custodian. And the crimes were apparently committed with a gun found at his mother’s house—a gun
that hadn’t been fired for 28 years.
Indeed, Hinton had no money to defend
himself. One of the restaurant managers
survived and identified Hinton as the perpetrator, and then there was nothing
Hinton could do to clear his name. Nor could an incompetent court-appointed
lawyer and an incompetent ballistics expert. As one of the cops said, when Hinton
expressed to him that he was innocent: “Number one, you’re black. Number two, a
white man gonna say you shot him. Number three, you’re gonna have a white
district attorney. Number four, you’re gonna have a white judge. And number
five, you’re gonna have an all-white jury.”
Hinton was convicted and sentenced to death. He spent
nearly 30 years on death row in the Alabama state prison. Eventually, he got
the attention of a prisoner advocacy group that worked for years to clear Hinton’s
name. It seems impossible to believe that it could take that long, but there
were several false starts, as well as several times the system shut the appeals
down. It was Hinton’s faith in his own innocence and his growth and learning
about the justice system that brought him to a famous lawyer, Bryan Stevenson,
whose faith in Hinton caused the case to be dropped and in 2015, Hinton went
free.
This book would be very hard to read were it not for Hinton’s
personality, his marvelous character and his rock solid faith in God. He had a presence on death row that was felt
by everyone with whom he came in contact. First, his mother was the backbone of
his life; he has a lifelong friend named Lester who came to see him every week;
and the guards and the warden became his friends and supporters. Hinton offered care to
all the other prisoners on death row, and even arranged for a book club to give
the death row prisoners something more to think about than their impending
deaths.
Now that he has been released, he has become an advocate for
prison reform as he speaks around the country. He works with his lawyer helping
other prisoners, but most importantly, he has taken hate out of his life and out
of his heart. He has forgiven everyone responsible for the brokenness of the
justice system. His life has become an inspiration for everyone with whom he comes in contact.
I didn’t want to read this book and struggled much of the
way through it. My church book group is reading the book for this month’s
meeting, and I felt compelled to read it. I’m glad now that I persisted. I am grateful
for those advocates who are fighting to change the justice system and grateful
that Hinton is alive to tell his story and continue the fight for justice.
The Sun Does Shine was on the New York Times bestseller list for several weeks and was one of
Oprah’s book picks. Hinton has appeared on several television shows. Here is a video
that was on ABC news at the time of his release. It is difficult but
yet inspiring to watch.
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