“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read.”
—James Baldwin
Right before Ray was supposed to have his Rule 32 hearing, the State’s attorney general’s office filed what’s called a writ of mandamus to force the lower court to dismiss his petition altogether. Basically, that meant they didn’t want the lower court to look at the evidence of his innocence. Their motion to dismiss said that they were not required to listen to or defend any of his innocence claims or look at the new ballistics tests because too much time had passed, or there wasn’t any “new” evidence. Ray couldn’t believe it. They said it was a waste of time. The attorney general said in his brief that Ray should be blocked from establishing his innocence because it would “waste three days or two days of taxpayer money.” They weren’t even willing to hear him out. To look at the new evidence. To see what Perhacs had failed to show them in 1986. It hurt all over again. What kind of a world was it where an innocent man can lose sixteen years of his life and it’s a waste of time to let him prove he’s innocent? Ray’s sixteen years was less important than a couple of days of the attorney general’s time.
Bryan sent Ray a letter explaining everything and offering encouragement. He was always there to make sure Ray’s spirits never dropped too low at every legal twist and turn.
March 12, 2002
Anthony Ray Hinton, Z-468 Holman State Prison Holman, 3700
Atmore, Alabama 36503
Dear Ray:
I just wanted to touch base with you after what seems like a very strange five days. I spoke with Judge Garrett on Monday morning to try and block your transfer to Birmingham and to confirm that we would not litigate this case piecemeal. The judge is very angry at the State. I think he is even more suspicious of their desperation to keep us from presenting this evidence than I had hoped. The State may have made a serious mistake in antagonizing the court this way. The State waited until the day before the hearing to file a stay motion, which is pretty bad form, if nothing else.
We will file a response to the State’s papers in the next two weeks. The State is essentially arguing that our evidence will be the same as what was presented at trial and therefore we have no right to present it. We are saying that they can’t know what the evidence is until we present it and if it’s unpersuasive then they have nothing to fear. The appeal likely means that it will be May before we can schedule another hearing date.
We had a very good week last week and had organized a pretty compelling case. I’ll talk to you about some recent developments, new witnesses we found, when I see you next at the prison. I will try to get down as soon as I can.
I know it’s upsetting to have the hearing postponed like this. I was pretty furious all day on Saturday. We had spent lots of money on nonrefundable plane tickets for witnesses, rented computer equipment for audiovisual presentations for the courtroom, and done a lot of stuff to prepare for this hearing. Most importantly, however, it’s just wrong for you to spend more days and weeks on death row for something you did not do.
However, our day will come. Don’t be too discouraged, the race is not given to the quick but to the one who endures. I’m more hopeful than ever that we will prevail and you will go home.
Enclosed is the State’s motion, our initial response, and the court’s order. I’m trying to schedule a time to see you sometime in the next few weeks. Hang in there, my friend.
Sincerely,
Bryan Stevenson
Ray wasn’t surprised that the State was doing its best to keep him locked away and quiet. It was what the court had done from the beginning. It was still a lynching. It was taking decades to get the noose wrapped just right. On top of that, the State was unwilling to admit it had made a mistake. This system would rather accept injustice than admit that it had been unjust.
Ray knew that there were men before him and men after him who would abuse the system, who would be guilty but exhaust every claim to try to keep from getting killed. He didn’t blame them. He couldn’t blame them. Who wouldn’t fight for their survival? For their right to live? And yes, Ray understood that the victims didn’t have a chance to fight for their right to live. What he didn’t understand was how any killing could be justified. Man didn’t have the right to take a life. The State didn’t have the right to take a life either. They were killing on behalf of the people, and Ray wondered what the people really believed. Yes, there were brutal, unremorseful, coldhearted, sociopathic, danger-to-society killers on death row. Ray knew this for a fact. He walked next to them on the yard. He showered with them, talked to them. He knew some of them would kill him in a heartbeat if they could—not that they hated him, but killing was what they did. Some had intellectual disabilities, and others would be considered geniuses. No matter what, Ray still didn’t believe any person or any institution had a right to take their life, no matter what they had done.
“The people” was such a general term that Ray wondered what would happen if the prison asked the real people. “Jo Martin, we are going to kill Anthony Ray Hinton today, and we’re going to do it in your name. We’re going to say that we are killing him on behalf of Jo Martin. Is that okay?” Or Sarah Paulson, or Angela Ruiz, or Victor Wilson, or insert any name.
“The people” were made up of real people, and so were the condemned men on the row. Life is brutal, tragic, unbearable, and inhumane at times. Ray knew that the pain one man can cause another was limitless, but he didn’t see—he couldn’t see—how creating more pain made anything better. When you took a life, it didn’t bring back a life. It didn’t undo what was done. It wasn’t logical. This was just creating an endless chain of death and killing. It was barbaric. No baby is born a murderer. No toddler dreams of being on death row someday. Every killer on death row was taught to be a killer—by parents, by a system, by the brutality of another brutalized person—but no one was born a killer. His friend Henry wasn’t born to hate. He was taught to hate, and to hate so much that killing was justified. No one was born to this one precious life to be locked in a cell and murdered. Not the innocent like Ray, but not the guilty either. Life was a gift given by God. He believed it should and could only be taken by God as well. Or whatever a man believed in. It didn’t matter to him. But God never gave the guards, or the warden, or the judges, or the State of Alabama, or the federal government, or the people the right to take a life.
Nobody had that right.
Ray was afraid every single day on death row. And he also found a way to find joy every single day. He learned that fear and joy are both a choice. And every morning when he opened his eyes at 3:00 a.m. and saw the cement and the mesh wire and the sadness and the filth of his tiny cell, Ray had a choice. Would he choose fear, or would he choose love? Would he choose a prison, or would he choose a home? It wasn’t always easy. On the days that Ray chose a home, he could laugh with the guards, listen to the other guys, talk about their cases, about books and ideas and what they all might do when they walked out of their prison hell. But on the days when Ray opened his eyes and felt nothing but terror, when every corner of that cell looked like a black-and-white horror film with an ax-wielding killer just waiting to jump out at him and hack him to pieces, he would close his eyes again and he would leave.
Ray also had to give up his dreams of Halle Berry for Sandra Bullock. He had seen the movie Speed and he thought Sandra would be good to have in case he ever busted out of death row and needed a getaway driver. He’d also watched her play a law student on a Black man’s defense team, and her portrayal made Ray think she would fight for him. She would stand up to them all, and in his mind, she—along with Bryan—was Ray’s voice out in the world.
In these fantasies, with Halle or Sandra or the Queen of England, all of them, Ray never imagined having children. He couldn’t bear even the idea of being separated from his children. When the dreams were over, he had to leave Sandra, leave his mom, leave his professional baseball career, and travel back to death row and be there for a while. Ray didn’t want to do that to a child. He knew how hard it was for him to be apart from his mom, and he wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone, especially not a child.
The guys on the row who had children bore a pain that was almost too much to witness. They ached and they cried and they missed all the things that other parents take for granted. And they also knew how much their children suffered—no child wanted to brag about his or her dad on death row. Ray knew there were women on death row, a couple of hours away at Tutwiler Prison. He couldn’t imagine the guards putting a woman to death. Especially a woman with children. But one of the guys on death row was a guy named George Sibley. He and his wife, Lynda, had both been sent to death row, and they had a nine-year-old son with them when they killed a police officer in 1993.
Lynda was executed before George. Ray wondered what it was like for a man to be locked in a cell and have his wife about to be murdered and not be able to do a thing about it? On May 10, 2002, they brought her to Holman. They walked her through the row. A woman on death row. She wore white like the rest of the prisoners. She held her head up and looked straight ahead. They shaved her head just like they shaved a man’s head. Ray didn’t know if she and George got to see each other. George never spoke of that day. When she was executed, Ray and the others banged on the bars. They made some noise. For her. For George. For their son who was eighteen years old by that time. Ray felt physically ill even trying to put himself in George’s shoes. He knew George wished he had gone first.
The guards who strapped her to the chair and then put her dead body on a gurney would finish those tasks and then hand George his breakfast a few hours later. They would smile and ask him how he was doing, but they would never be able to look him in the eye again. How could they?
Ray could not comprehend it.
Lynda was the last person to be electrocuted in Yellow Mama. After her execution, the prison began remodeling the death chamber and getting ready for a new way to kill.
It was called lethal injection.