“Every night, I go outside and look up at the stars and moon, because for years I could not see either. I walk in the rain, because I didn’t feel rain for years … I’ve never had an apology, but I forgave those involved in my conviction long before I left prison. I didn’t forgive them so they can sleep well at night. I did it so I can.”1
—Anthony Ray Hinton
Sometimes Ray tells people that he’s the only man to get MVP in the NBA, the MLB, and the NFL. They look at him and some of them say out loud what all of them are thinking: “You really lost it in there, didn’t you?”
Ray has spent the time since release telling his story to anyone who will listen. People from all walks of life want to hear his story now. He was asked to go to a private island and tell his story to a group of celebrities and others who are working hard to end the death penalty. Ray goes where he’s asked to go—churches, colleges, small meeting rooms, private islands. He knows that he’s a curiosity—the man who survived death row—but he also knows that he is a powerful voice for every man who still sits on the row. “I believe in justice,” he tells crowds of people. “I’m not against punishment. But I don’t believe in cruelty. I don’t believe in useless punishment.”
One day at a church not too far away from Birmingham, a man raises his hand after Ray’s done speaking and asks him what advice he would give to someone who found themselves in his position. “Pray,” Ray says. “And when you’re done praying, call Bryan Stevenson.”
People always laugh when Ray says that. They laugh when he tells them about his marriages to Halle and Sandra and Kim. But laughing puts people at ease in a way that helps them to listen. It was true on death row, and it’s true outside of death row.
And he needs people to listen.
Lester bought a house about two hundred yards from Ray’s mama’s house. Ray fixed up her house—and now he lives there by himself. He repaired the gazebo she loved so much. He still mows the grass the same as he did the day he was arrested.
People ask him how he can stay in Alabama. Why not leave? But Alabama is his home. Ray loves Alabama—the hot days in the summer and the thunderstorms in winter. He loves the smell of the air and the green of the woods. Alabama had always been God’s country to Ray, and that did not change.
Ray loves Alabama, but he doesn’t love the State of Alabama. Since his release, not one prosecutor, or state attorney general, or anyone having anything to do with his conviction has apologized. Ray doubts that they ever will.
He forgives them. Ray made a choice after those first difficult few weeks at Lester’s when everything was new and strange and the world didn’t seem to make sense. Ray chose to forgive. He chose to stay vigilant to any signs of anger or hate in his heart. They took thirty years of his life.
If he couldn’t forgive, if he couldn’t feel joy, that would be like giving them the rest of his life.
The rest of his life belonged to him. The State of Alabama took thirty years. That was enough.
It’s been hard for Ray to get used to life outside of death row. Computers and the internet and Skype and cell phones and text messaging and email. He didn’t know anything about all of that. A whole world of technology had happened while he was in his cell, and it wasn’t easy to catch up. And as much as he tried to change it, his body and his mind still stick to the routines they learned on death row. Ray is up at 3:00 a.m. and ready for breakfast. Lunch is at 10:00. Dinner is at 2:00 p.m. He only sleeps on one corner of his giant king-size bed.
It’s hard to create a new routine, but he tries.
Freedom is a funny thing. Ray has his freedom, but in some ways, he is still locked down on the row. He still knows what day they are serving fish for dinner. He knows when it’s visiting day and at what point the guys are walking in the yard. His mind goes back there every single day—it was easier for his mind to leave the row when he was inside than it is now that he’s free.
The first time he felt rain on his skin, he wept. He hadn’t felt the rain in thirty years. Now when it rains, he rushes right into it. He’d never appreciated the beauty of rain until it was gone for thirty years.
For thirty years, the State of Alabama could tell him what to wear, when to eat, when to sleep, and they could take away his name and give him a number. They controlled every single moment of how he spent his life for thirty years. The one thing that belonged to him—that he had complete control of—was his own mind. His imagination. His perspective. His experience of reality. They couldn’t lock up his mind. Or control it. Or threaten to kill it. His soul and his imagination were God-given and no one could touch those. In prison, how you do your time is how you live. You can fight and resist against every second of the clock and day on the calendar—or you can transcend time and space. Many couldn’t understand it, but he was able to transcend time and space.
Without a doubt, Ray’s imagination was the number one thing that helped him survive thirty years in hell. Staying sane on death row is hard enough—but it’s a whole other thing when you know you are innocent. “When you are in a living, waking nightmare,” says Ray, “you have to have a way to escape in your imagination.” As far as Ray was concerned, the State of Alabama had kidnapped him and held him prisoner. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He understands that he learned, as many trauma victims do, to purposefully disassociate himself from his experience. He’s no psychologist—but he is a survivor.
Ray walks every morning, for as long as he wants and as far as he wants. He walks because he can walk. That also has a beauty he never saw before.
Ray carries scars that only Lester and Bryan see, and he only trusts them. He documents every day of his life. He always gets receipts. He purposely walks in front of security cameras. He doesn’t stay home alone for too long without calling a few people to tell them what he’s doing. He always calls someone to say good night. He’s not lonely, or afraid to be alone. In many ways, he prefers to be alone.
He does it to create an alibi for every single day of his life because Ray lives in fear this could happen to him again.
A few days a week, Ray goes to Montgomery and works with Bryan and his staff at the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). He travels around the country with Bryan or one of his staff and tells his story. Ray is over sixty, and he doesn’t have any retirement income. He doesn’t have the luxury of retiring, and he wouldn’t even if he did. Retire from what? He had his retirement in his thirties and forties and fifties. Now, Anthony Ray Hinton is ready to live. He wakes up every morning grateful to be alive and grateful to be free. He speaks as a voice for the men still on the row. He is a voice for justice. He’s the living image of all that is broken in our prison system.
He wants to end the death penalty. He knows firsthand that the justice system is a broken system. It’s a barbaric system. It’s not a system that elevates humanity. His faith tells him not to kill, and he never heard anything about that being conditional. The “monsters” on death row were once children who needed play and hope and love and stability just like anyone else. Many of them never got those things. Ray doesn’t excuse their actions later in life, but he now believes, as Bryan Stevenson says, there is more to each person than the worst thing they have done. He does not believe anyone has a moral or a legal right to take a life—not even in exchange for another life. He believes that murder is wrong—even when you are the State and doing it for the people.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
“The more I know about the death penalty, the more problems I see with it. But what seems most pressing to me now is that the death penalty increases pain. It’s like a machine that takes this terribly painful human event, and it takes that pain and replicates it and sends it spewing out in all directions.”2
—Elizabeth Hambourger, Center for Death Penalty Litigation
“Capital punishment is the culmination of violence at both ends of society: the violence of the individual criminal, who is caught in a cycle of violence and whose life ends in a violent death; and the violence of the state, with its police forces and wars whose ultimate expression is the use of violent death as a form of retributive justice. In the middle, there is pain and sorrow for the families of the victims and of those who are sentenced to death, and for all the people with roles to play in the execution process. At the end of the day, capital punishment is a prison for the individual and society alike.”3
—Mario Marazziti, 13 Ways of Looking at the Death Penalty
What about people who commit really serious crimes? What about when someone kills another human being? How do we hold them accountable? Doesn’t the death penalty act as a deterrent, a warning against murder?
Some believe that life in prison without parole, plus some form of restitution to victims’ families, is an appropriate alternative to the death penalty. Others believe that life without parole involves the same injustices that exist with the use of capital punishment. “Life without parole has many of the same qualities that make the death penalty so abhorrent. Capital punishment is riddled with racial disparities, junk science, and a legal system that routinely fails the marginalized,” making it “a punishment both extreme and one that disproportionately affects the most marginalized people … Thirty percent of lifers are 55 years of age or older, and nearly 4,000 inmates serving life were convicted of a drug-related offense; 8,600 people serving life with the possibility of parole or virtual life were sentenced as minors.”6 Some believe that long-term sentences with a focus on rehabilitation are the best thing for society.
“Using the same mindset as killers to solve our problems demeans our own worth and dignity. Victims’ families have every right initially to feelings of revenge. But the laws of our land should not be based on bloodthirsty, gut-level state-sanctioned killings: They should call us to higher moral principles more befitting our beloved victims.”7
—Marietta Jaeger-Lane, whose daughter, Susie, was kidnapped and murdered by David Meirhoffer
Ray wants to make sure that what happened to him never happens to anyone else.
He wants to buy Lester an Escalade to pay him back for all the miles he put on his cars—for never missing a visiting day in thirty years. Looking forward to Lester’s visits helped Ray mark and pass the time. The hours he spent with his best friend reminded Ray of who he was and where he was from and even where he belonged. Time with Lester had always been simple and easy and meaningful since they were boys. Having a constant presence of someone who believed in him helped Ray endure.
Lester wasn’t an imaginary friend—he was flesh and blood and friendship and faith. His unwavering support steadied Ray. Year after year after year. He could never adequately put into words how Lester saved his life. Friendship can be even more powerful than family because the bond is built on time and experience and a million different moments. Blood is blood, but friendship is a choice.
For Ray, there are so many things left to do in this world that he prays to God he will have the time to do them. He talks to his mom’s picture every night and tells her that he’s home. He cares for the place they called home, and he feels her presence every single day.
Every evening, he sits in the gazebo she loved. When there is an execution at Holman scheduled, Ray bangs his palm against the wood and murmurs the words he said fifty-four times before. “Hang in there. Don’t give up. Hold your head high. We’re here. You’re not alone. It’s going to be okay.” Fifty-four times he never knew the right thing to say.
He still doesn’t know.
Ray has lived a life knowing unconditional love. He learned on the row how rare that is. His mother loved him completely; so does Lester. His friendship with Lester is rare and precious, and every time Ray is invited somewhere to speak he brings Lester with him. It’s the least he could do, and every once in a while, they look at each other and smile. It’s wild. Two poor boys from the old coal mining town of Praco, and they just shut down Buckingham Palace to give us a private tour.
He got to see a Yankees game. He and Lester went to Hawaii. He gets asked all the time if he’s gotten a girlfriend since his release and the answer is no—but he’s open to dating and he’s also still waiting for Sandra Bullock or Halle Berry or Kim Kardashian to give him a call.
Ray has kept busy, and he’d say he’s been blessed. But he would trade it all to get his thirty years back, for just one more minute with his mother. He tries not to ask, “Why me?” He thinks that’s a selfish question.
Why anyone?
McGregor passed away, and he wrote a book before he died. He mentions Ray in the book and says how evil Ray is, a clever killer that McGregor knew just from looking at him that he was guilty.
Ray forgives him. He figures someone taught him to be racist, just as someone taught Henry Hays. They are two sides of the same coin.
Ray forgives Reggie. He forgives Perhacs and Acker and Judge Garrett and every attorney general who fought to keep the truth from being revealed. He forgives the State of Alabama for being a bully. He forgives because if he didn’t, he would only hurt himself.
He forgives because that’s how his mother raised him. He forgives because he has a God who forgives.
Some days Ray is grateful to be free and determined to inspire and help, and other days he spends grieving what was lost.
Some things are easier to endure if you believe they will be over at any moment. If he could talk to young Ray now, he would tell his younger self that his mind is stronger than he knows. He would also tell him that someday he will share his story in a book, so write down everything he can so it’s not so painful to relive later.
Stories matter. In getting to know the stories of others on death row, even the guards who managed his imprisonment and former Klan members like Henry Hays. Ray was always reminded that everyone has a story—every person makes choices, good and bad, and everyone has a reason for the choices they make. Innocent or guilty, every person’s life matters. Every person’s story matters. The books Ray read with his book club on death row made him feel not so alone, they helped him escape his own sad and unjust story through his imagination. They helped him write a new story for his life.
It’s hard not to wrap your life in a neat and tidy story—a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. A story that has logic and purpose and a bigger reason for why things turned out the way they did. He would love to share his story with every single man and woman on death row in this country and every single person in prison around the world. His message to the men at Holman is the same as his message to everyone else—Life is short. Forgive. Keep your faith in truth, in goodness, and in the ability of people to change. And hope is a light that can never be extinguished, no matter where you are.
Ray looks for purpose in losing thirty years of his life. He tries to make meaning out of something so wrong and so senseless.
We all look for ways to recover after bad things happen. We try to make every ending be a happy ending.
Every single one of us wants to matter. We want our lives and our stories and the choices we made or didn’t make to matter.
Death row taught Ray that it all matters. How we live matters.
As of April 2021, around 2,500 people are on death row in this country.
Statistically, one out of every ten people is innocent.
Each has a family, a story, a series of choices and events that have led to a life spent in a cage. Do you know who is wrongfully convicted? Do you know who is innocent?
Ray was once another name in a long list of names. Another person deemed irredeemable. The worst kind of cold-blooded killer that ever walked this earth.
Only it wasn’t true.
Can we judge who deserves to live and who deserves to die? Do we have that right, and do we have that right when we know that we are often wrong? If one out of every ten planes crashed, we would stop all flights until we figured out what was broken. Our system is broken; isn’t it time to put a stop to the death penalty? Bryan references the famous saying about how the moral arc of the universe bends toward justice, and he adds that justice needs help. Justice only happens when good people take a stand against injustice. The moral arc of the universe needs people to support it as it bends.
Do we choose love or do we choose hate? Do we help or do we harm?
Everyone can work for social justice and to create a judicial system that does not sentence you based on your income or your skin color. We can vote for politicians who believe that we have a system in need of reform and are willing to acknowledge the broken pieces and replace them. Ray believes that we need a system that gets to the root cause of criminality and leads with the belief that people can be rehabilitated and that every single life is worthwhile. “When men and women are exonerated and released from wrongful incarceration, they need support to transition back to noninstitutional life,” Ray says. “They don’t need cameras in their faces; they need help getting a driver’s license, a job, and a safe place to live. They need help reintegrating into a quickly changing technological world. They need compensation for the years they lost. They need to know they are valued.”
Who has value? How do you decide who matters?
“The death penalty is broken, and you are either part of the Death Squad or you are banging on the bars,” Ray has said. “Choose.”
And maybe some lives will change forever.