“We can start to ask those in our lives that do not experience justice to tell us their story. And perhaps that story might bring some critical action steps towards engaging in the ongoing US struggle ‘for liberty and justice for all.’”
—Lia Howard, Listening to the Disenfranchised
Ray married Halle Berry on a Sunday, one of his best daydreams yet. They promised to love each other in sickness and in health, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, until death do us part, and his heart felt like it was going to burst open with happiness and joy.
“Oh, Ray,” she murmured, “I love you so much. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t met you.”
Ray pledged to love and care for Halle forever. The preacher pronounced them man and wife, and Lester and his mama threw wedding rice at the couple as they ran to a white stretch limousine.
“Goodbye, everyone,” Ray said. “We are traveling around the world, but we will be back in a year to see you all again.”
“Goodbye, baby,” his mama said as she wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him tight. “You bring me home a grandchild, you hear me? I want twin grandbabies. A boy and a girl.”
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said, laughing and kissing her on the cheek.
Lester shook his hand and then patted him on the back. “You did it,” he said. “You found the perfect woman for you. You are a lucky man, and Halle is a lucky woman.”
In his dream, Ray knew Lester was genuinely happy for him. Life was good. He embraced his new wife, Halle Berry, and—-
“Hinton! Get your butt up, Hinton! Now!”
The door slammed open, and four guards rushed into his cell and grabbed his arms. Ray felt himself pushed up against the wall, his head turned to the right so that his cheekbone pushed into the cold cement. One guard’s hand was on his upper back, and they were outfitted in full riot gear with vests and weapons.
He didn’t recognize these four guards. They started turning over his books and throwing his shorts and socks into the hallway outside his cell. Up went his mattress, and his perfect pressed whites that he had been working on creasing for the last few days were thrown to the ground and stepped on by a black boot. He watched as the pictures of his mama and of his nieces were thrown out into the hall as well.
“You don’t like this, do you?” one of the guards asked. Ray didn’t answer.
“You got a television in here and everything. Seems like death row is pretty cushy here at Holman.”
Were they going to break his TV, or throw it out in the hall? They just looked under it and checked to see that there was nothing hidden behind the cord or that none of the electronics were loose.
“You got too many clothes in here. We’re going to take half of them. You’re not allowed to have so many shorts and socks. This isn’t summer camp.”
Ray watched them throw more clothes out into the hall. “You don’t like this, do you?” the guard asked again.
“No, I don’t,” Ray answered.
“We might come back in five minutes and do this all again. We are here in your prison for twelve hours today, and your staff is over at Donaldson going through our prison. Fresh eyes see new things. Hell, we might do this every hour on the hour today, and what you gonna do about that?”
Ray could feel the man’s elbow against his back, pressing him harder into the wall.
“Why don’t you just move in here if you want to do that?” Ray said. “You can throw stuff around all day, then. I’ll go out, and you just stay here and do what you need to do.” He said it quietly, almost politely, and the three guards going through his stuff stopped for a second and turned to look at him.
One of them laughed. The other two shook their heads, and the one who had Ray up against the wall pressed in even harder.
“Strip search,” he said. “Take it all off.”
Ray looked down and shook his head. This was the worst of what they could do when they came to shake down the inmates. The regular guards rarely strip-searched the men on the row—there had to be a good reason. A weapon found somewhere or a big drug bust in general population. Usually, they left them alone, and the prisoners kept the peace. All the warden cared about on the row was keeping the peace. The inmates had representatives who met with the captain of the guards, and he told them what he needed and the men asked for what they needed. Usually, they met somewhere in the middle. The inmates didn’t want trouble, and the guards were understaffed and didn’t want trouble either.
But these were guards from another prison, and they liked busting in and flexing their muscle on death row. Ray had known guys like them his whole life. They were the guys in high school who felt powerless and picked on, and now they had some small bit of power in their little worlds.
“Strip!”
Ray took off all of his clothes, and they searched every inch and crevice of his body, just to humiliate him. He wondered what kind of men these were, who enjoyed doing something this degrading. It was a game for them. Ray wasn’t a man to them—he didn’t even think they thought of him as human.
“You can get dressed now. And clean this place up. We’ll be here all shift. We might be back.”
Everything was a mess. His sheets were in the dirt on the floor. Their boots had stepped on his clean clothes and maybe even on his toothbrush, which lay in the corner next to the toilet.
Tomorrow, the regular guards would come back and pretend to be shocked at what happened. They wouldn’t mention that they had gone to one of the other prisons in Alabama and torn things up the same way. This is how they kept themselves from being accountable. He threw out your picture of your mama? You got to be kidding me!
And that’s how it worked with a shakedown. You never saw it coming, and no one was ever responsible.
Alan Black filed an amended Rule 32 petition in 1994. That required the State to turn over all of their records and evidence to him for Ray’s appeal.
In May 1997, Henry got his execution date. June 6. Ray and the others tried to keep it positive.
“Hold your head up, Henry.”
“You just never know what’s going to happen.”
“The governor could give you a stay.”
“Be positive.”
Guys said these kinds of things to him in the yard, on the way to the shower. Ray thought Henry felt more love from the Black men on death row than he ever did at a KKK meeting or from his own father and mother.
The book club had met a few more times and read Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. All the books talked about race in the South, and Henry at first had shied away from the subject, almost pretending not to know how unfairly Black people were treated until they called him out on it. He was ashamed of how he had been brought up and ashamed of the beliefs that had brought him to the row. “You never knew what a person could grow up to become,” he’d say. “Why tell someone she can’t be a nurse or a guy he can’t be a doctor or a lawyer because they’re Black? That person could discover a cure for AIDS or for cancer. You just never know.”
Ray knew he was thinking of Michael Donald, the boy he had killed. He knew Henry wondered what that boy might have grown up to become. Henry was the first white man to be put to death for killing a Black person in almost eighty-five years. Henry’s death meant something to people outside of the row. It was making a point about racism and justice and fairness like all the books they had been reading in book club, but to the inmates, it was a family member being killed.
The guards were extra nice the week before they killed someone. Asking how they were and what they could get them. The condemned man could have visitors anytime he wanted, without any paperwork or hoops to jump through. He got something cold to drink and food from the vending machine or made special for you in the kitchen. Special treatment on the way to the death room.
Before Henry was moved to the death room to wait for his execution, he and Ray talked one last time.
“I’m sorry, Ray; I’m sorry for what I done.”
“I know you are. God knows you are.”
“I don’t know if I ever told you this, but I have a brother named Ray. He’s my brother too.” It would probably seem unimaginable to a lot of people, but there it was: Henry considered Ray his brother.
Ray could hear that Henry was crying, and his heart broke for him. There was no past and no future on the row. You only had the moment you were in, and when you tried to survive moment to moment, there wasn’t the luxury of judgment. Unbelievable as it might have seemed, Henry was Ray’s friend. It wasn’t complicated. Ray would show him compassion, because that’s how he was raised. That’s how he could lay his head down at night in this hellhole and feel like he could make it through another day. A laugh here and there. A helping hand. Friendship. Compassion for another human who was suffering. Ray would keep his humanity. They would not take that from him, no matter what.
At a few minutes before midnight on June 5, Ray stood at the door of his cell. He took off his shoe and started banging on the bars and wire. He wanted Henry to hear him. He wanted Henry to know he wasn’t alone. Ray knew when they shaved Henry’s head, and he heard when the generator kicked on. Ray banged louder, as did all of the other guys. They banged on their bars for Henry Hays. Black. White. It didn’t matter. Henry was scared and alone. Ray knew that he was afraid that hell waited on the other side of death row because of what he had done. The inmates banged and yelled and hollered as loud as they could. For fifteen minutes, Ray screamed until his throat was raw and hoarse. He screamed so Henry would know that he meant something. He screamed so that whoever was there to watch the State of Alabama kill in their name knew that they were real men and that they could not be covered with a black hood and killed without feeling pain. Ray screamed because he knew that innocent men had been strapped into that horrid yellow chair, their dignity stripped away little by little, their worth as humans tied up with electric wires and thrown away like garbage. Innocent men had died in that chair. Guilty men had died in that chair. Strong men had wept like babies, and weak men had held steady as they met their deaths. Ray yelled for Henry so he would hear and know that he didn’t have to meet his maker alone. And that whoever stared at him in that death chamber with cold eyes was no match against the heat of the inmates’ cries. They screamed in protest and they screamed in unity and they screamed because there are times when screaming is all there is left to do.
You can’t watch a man die—see how one day he is there and the next he is gone—and not think about your own death. Alan Black hadn’t been back to see Ray, but Ray had received legal papers when Alan amended his petition again. By this point, Alan had been working on his case for over seven years. Ray was grateful to him. When Ray received word Alan was coming for a visit, he hoped it was good news.
“Ray, I got good news,” he said. “I’m working on a deal. I think I’ve got the State to the point where they will consider life without parole. I’m pretty sure we can get you off death row.”
He actually smiled at Ray when he said that. Like Ray was supposed to pat him on the back and be happy for that.
His name was Anthony Ray Hinton. People called him Ray.
“But I don’t want life without parole,” said Ray. “I’m innocent. I can’t get life without parole. That’s like admitting I did something that I didn’t do.” Ray had really thought Alan believed in him, that he knew Ray was innocent.
“It’s a way to save your life, Ray. It’s a great solution.”
Ray stared at him for a good five minutes. “No,” he said quietly.
“What?” he asked. “No, what?”
“I’m not going to agree to that. If I get life without parole, I have no way of walking free. I can’t prove my innocence if I agree to life without parole. I’m not going to spend my life in prison.”
“Ray, they’re going to kill you. They’re not going to let you go free. They don’t care if you’re innocent. They don’t have any reason to rule in your favor. The judge has given money for experts now because they don’t allow you to appeal for anything you could have appealed on before. They are denying everything we’re claiming. Life without parole is a good option.”
“What about the experts? What about the bullets?”
Alan Black just stared at Ray like he was an idiot. “I need money,” he said. “I need $10,000.”
“I don’t have any money.” Ray couldn’t believe they were back to this again. “You do know that I’m in here for robbing people. Why do you lawyers seem to think I have money? Ask Bryan Stevenson if you need money. He’s the one who sent you. I don’t have any money, and neither does my mama,” he said. “She’s been sick. Don’t go bothering her for money.”
“You need to ask at your church for the money. With $10,000, I can get you life without parole. Your church needs to collect the money. They’re nice people; they’re going to do that to save your life. Nobody wants to see you die, Ray. Not your mama, not me, not Bryan Stevenson, not your friends and your family, and not your church. Nobody wants that for you.” He was pleading his case.
Ray got up. It wasn’t just about the money.
It was about his innocence.
“I want to thank you for your time and for your help, but I won’t be needing your services anymore.”
Alan Black’s mouth fell open, and he laughed a little. “What are you talking about, Ray?”
“I won’t be needing your services any longer. You’re not my attorney. I’m firing you.”
“You’re firing me?”
“Yes, I’m firing you. Thank you for everything up until now, but I’d rather die for the truth than live a lie. I’m not agreeing to life without parole. I’ll rot and die in here before I agree to that. But thank you for working so hard.”
Ray waved to the guard and walked out of the visiting area. He didn’t look back at Alan Black, so he didn’t know if he was still sitting there with his mouth hanging open or if he had gotten up to try to follow him. Ray didn’t care. Alan Black didn’t believe in him, and Ray didn’t believe in Alan Black.
Some things, like the horrible strip searches, Ray had no choice about.
But he wasn’t going to let anybody else shake him down.
Ray wasn’t ready to give up on his life. He was going to walk out of that place as an innocent man, or he was going to die trying. Nothing more and nothing less.