Wrongfully imprisoned, awaiting execution, and eventually exonerated and set free after 30 years on death row, Hinton exists among us as a courageous and movingly candid survivor of our state violence, an alive and signaling example of what’s wrong with our criminal justice system.
The tension between what is and what’s supposed to be marks any genuine consideration of the witness of Anthony Ray Hinton of Alabama. If decisions create culture, perhaps what is isn’t what has to be. As Nashville-based psychologist and author Christina Edmondson once observed, “Decisions create culture.” That three-word aphorism, applied personally and publicly, can go a long way toward getting a fix on fate, even arresting - and possibly reversing - the sinking feeling of the inevitable. With themes both timely and timeless, Hinton’s memoir tells his dramatic 30-year journey and shows how you can take away a man’s freedom, but you can’t take away his imagination, humor, or joy.Injustice isn’t an accident. With the help of civil rights attorney and bestselling author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, Hinton won his release in 2015.
For the next twenty-seven years he was a beacon-transforming not only his own spirit, but those of his fellow inmates. But as Hinton realized and accepted his fate, he resolved not only to survive, but find a way to live on Death Row. He spent his first three years on Death Row in despairing silence-angry and full of hatred for all those who had sent an innocent man to his death. Stunned, confused, and only 29 years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free.īut with a criminal justice system with the cards stacked against Black men, Hinton was sentenced to death. In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. The Sun Does Shine is an extraordinary testament to the power of hope sustained through the darkest times, now adapted for younger readers, with a revised foreword by Just Mercy author Bryan Stevenson. A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year
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