The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton
Introduction
Anthony Ray Hinton coauthored with Laura Love Hardin to write his memoir “The Sun Does Shine,” which provides a compelling narrative of his unfair conviction of thirty yeats in Alabama’s Holman State Prison. He will be released in 2015. He asserts that his experience is distinctive while giving his account and relating it to the criminal justice system. He contends that he is among many individuals that have been wrongfully imprisoned, which is a unique American injustice demonstrating evident racial and class dimensions. An analysis through the book points out Hinton’s trial, his experiences on death row, how the criminal justice failed him, the process and duration it took for his release, among other issues.
Anthony Ray Hinton’s Trial
At the age of 29, Hinton was arrested as he mowed the yard of his mother in rural Alabama. He got charged with armed robberies, two counts of capital murder of Thomas Wayne Vason, and John Davidson during fatal armed robberies around local restaurants. An attempted murder account for a third individual (Faulk, 2015). The manager of the affected restaurant in Bessemer identified him through a photo lineup. Yet, he was working in a locked warehouse located fifteen miles away during the crime. After his arrest, the public defense attorney failed to provide sufficient counsel. He told Hinton that Black Americans always say that they did not do something and will always stick together. The ballistics expert thought could represent Hinton was considered not credible enough due to the lack of experience and physical limitations.
Law enforcement officers seized an old revolver belonging to his mother, and the forensic examiners indicated that the gun was used to commit all the three crimes. The prosecution’s sole evidence against Hinton was that the ballistics test indicated four crime scene bullets that were a match to the gun found at his mother’s home (Kaiser, 2018). The defendant believed that the charges would be cleared since he had not committed the crimes. However, the progress of the case demonstrated that things were not looking great. Hinton would be convicted of the two murders and sentenced to death. The trial did not look into any fingerprints of eyewitness testimonies.
The jury overlooked the defendant’s employer’s testimony who stated that Hinton was at the place of work at the time of the crime. The jury also overlooked the polygraph results that vindicated Hinton from committing the crimes. The prosecution used their right to refuse the use of particular evidence in court; hence the court did not consider those results. Sheldon Perhacs, his lawyer, got the best affordable expert, Andrew Payne, to look into the evidence that is the gun and the bullets. Payne examined them to find that the two were not a match. Cross-examination by the prosecution on Andrew Payne would find that he was not credible enough to do so. Payne was forced to confess that on his arrival to the Forensic Laboratory, he was not sure about the exact kind of comparison microscope to be used. He even struggled to see the bullet. Prosecution queried Payne on whether he had a vision problem, which he admitted to having one eye. The Alabama Court of Criminal appeals unanimously affirmed the defendant’s conviction and death sentence in June 1988. It would later be affirmed by the Supreme Court of Alabama unanimously in June 1989 (Espinoza, 2018).
His Experiences on Death Row
Hinton indicates that his years on death row are still haunting him for almost 30 years being pure hell. For the first three years, he indicates that he did not speak to anyone. The police guards would ask him questions, and he would answer them by writing them down. To deal with the immense solitude, Hinton would imagine himself in other places such as France or drinking tea with Queen Elizabeth or getting married to Halle Berry (Kaiser, 2018). In death row, his home was a small white concrete cell with a toilet and always monitored by guards’ eyes. It was the same every day that was mainly having breakfast, lunch, and dinner at 3 A.M, 10 A.M and 3 P.M respectively. If they were lucky, he would get an hour in the exercise yard among other death row inmates depending on the weather conditions or availability of guards. As one reads through his experiences, it brings one to the point of emotion overwhelm as the experiences are daunting.
Notably, his sense of humor helped him interact with other death row inmates and prison guards or the correction officers. He would try to make everybody happy (Johnson, 2015). For instance, he would see a guard come by; he would reach out, greet the officer before telling him that he would run to the officer’s house for an hour and would need the latter’s car to do so. He would assure of bringing it back, but the move was urgent. These kinds of humorous interactions would have them sharing a laugh with the officer. Regardless of the reasons behind his incarceration, Hinto had chosen to love and forgive all persons. He would also interact with individuals of other races. He wanted to live in peace with himself and his soul despite his time being stolen from him for a horrible crime that he did not commit.
Apart from his sense of humor, loving, and forgiving those who hurt him, Anthony Hinto was a prayerful individual who had grown in a Christian family. He learned from his mother about being prayerful and leaning on Jesus for his tribulations (Johnson, 2015). He constantly retreated to his world of dreams. While it would not be similar to gaining complete freedom from prison, it was still a method to escape death row. He would also start a book club where he and other inmates would read books and learn more about the justice system. The book club would also keep the inmates quiet and peaceful as they become even smarter. So the books would be brought by the warden, and they would pass them around to read. On completion, the club;’s members would meet for the discussion. It was a new experience to talk to one another without shouting from one cell to another, and it was something that all inmates wanted to experience (Kaiser, 2018). The face to face meetings was short-lived since some prisoners stated that it would be unfair for some to meet face to face. The books would still be passed around, but the meetings did not happen again.
As of 1997, Hinton had interacted with various attorneys while on death row, which failed to get him a re-trial of the case. At the time, the latest attorney had told him that he could get him a deal of life without parole. Hinton fired him immediately since he was not interested in serving life in a correctional facility for a crime he did not do. He knew exactly what he wanted, and it was only the tenacious and compassionate lawyer, Bryan Stevenson, who dealt with death-row inmates would help him get the new trial. Stevenson was running the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama. Hinton reached out to him since he knew he was a dedicated attorney. Stevenson had once stayed with his Vietnam veteran client until the end fighting his execution.
Hinton’s Release
The criminal justice system did fail Hinton as the systems depicted racism in all the processes he underwent. For instance, when he first arrives at the police station, the law enforcement officers tell him that his conviction is inevitable for five reasons (Kaiser, 2018). They included: him being black, the thirst for vengeance from the black race’s old enemy, having a constitutionally insufficient defense lawyer, the defense attorneys, jury and judge listening to the case would be all white. For these reasons, Hinton indicates that is why the conviction was on death row. The trial failed to incorporate reasonable standards to assess the evidence properly and even refused to consider the important evidence points that indicated Hinton’s innocence. The system was racially biased and would follow to have all the blacks charged within correctional facilities (Espinoza, 2018). The racial factor played a significant role in the conviction of Anthony Hinton.
Hinton would secure his release through the help of his lawyer, Bryan Stevenson. In 2002, the EJI would initiate the re-examination of the gun and bullets through three experts (Fitzgerald, 2020). All three testified that they could not conclude the six bullets being fired from the revolver. The prosecution responded by staying that the experts did say the same thing said by the ballistic examiner during the original trial, thus inconclusive results. Bryan Stevenson, who is also the head of the EJI, took Hinton’s case to the country’s Supreme Court (Fitzgerald, 2020). In February 2014, the court vacated from 6the defender’s conviction and death row sentence. The court would order a new trial after ruling that the trial lawyer had provided constitutionally insufficient legal defense by failing to seek more finances to get a qualified ballistics expert.
In November 2014, the case would be closed by the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals. The Jefferson County District Attorney dropped the case in April 2015. The forensic experts could also only match the bullets to the revolver, and the prosecution contended that they could also not match the two. This was the only evidence in the iniotaklb murder trial/ on April 2015, Hinton would hence be released from prison after the Jefferson County Circuit Judge overturning Hinton’s conviction and the state dropping all charges. It took him around 14 years for Hinton to secure his release.
Since his release, Hinton has been trying to hold talks with mainly black kids on prison life. He urges the kids to concentrate on their school life and get an education that will protect them from ending up in prison (Johnson, 2015). He states that while he is physically free, he still feels like he is under lockdown. Therefore, he states that he is taking the freedom process at a time. He also wants to bring humanity to the prison environment and have people understand what people are going through.
References
Espinoza, S. S. (2018). ‘The sun does shine’ exposes the infuriating truth of America’s criminal justice system. Retrieved from https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/4/3/sun-does-shine-review/
Faulk, K. (2015, May 10). How Anthony Ray Hinton survived 30 years on death row. Retrieved from https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/2015/05/how_anthony_ray_hinton_survive.html
Fitzgerald, T. (2020). Anthony Ray Hinton. Retrieved from https://www.witnesstoinnocence.org/single-post/Anthony-Ray-Hinton
Hinton, A. R., & Hardin, L. L. (2018). The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (Oprah’s Book Club Summer 2018 Selection). St. Martin’s Press.
Johnson, C. (2015, April 9). Thirty years on death row: A conversation with Anthony Ray Hinton. Retrieved from https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/04/09/30-years-on-death-row-a-conversation-with-anthony-ray-hinton
Kaiser, C. (2018, April 29). The sun does shine review: Death row memoir spotlights a judicial ‘lynching.’ Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/29/the-sun-does-shine-review-anthony-ray-hinton
