The State responded to my petition and basically denied everything we had claimed, saying that all my claims were “procedurally barred” because an issue was either already raised during my trial or in Perhacs’s direct appeal or it could have been raised on my direct appeal but wasn’t. It didn’t make any sense to me. It didn’t seem to matter that I was innocent, that people lied, that there were real issues with my trial—the State didn’t want to admit that anything was wrong, and unless you knew it was wrong or should have known it was wrong or could have known it was wrong but didn’t, you couldn’t argue it. Henry explained it to me. “If your attorney could have raised something during your trial and first appeal but didn’t, it’s barred by the State. If it was raised at trial or in your first appeal, and you were still convicted and denied, it’s also barred by the State.”
“But doesn’t that cover everything?” I asked. “I mean everything that you would appeal on?”
“Pretty much.”
It didn’t seem fair or right that the odds were stacked against me—against all of us. If you couldn’t afford to get an attorney at your trial or appeal, it seemed like you would never be able to prove you were innocent. A hearing was set for April 23, 1991, but then at the beginning of the month I got a note from Santha that my hearing was being postponed. She sent me a copy of the official notice she filed with the court withdrawing as my attorney. She couldn’t represent me anymore because of a new job in D.C., but she said that another attorney would be taking over. Bryan Stevenson’s office would send someone. She told me that they were going to amend my petition and change the hearing date and that it was now called a Rule 32 hearing because Alabama changed the rules of appellate law, but not to worry.
Not to worry.
I tried not to take it too hard. I called Lester and asked him to check in with the resource center in Montgomery. “Try to get hold of this Bryan Stevenson and see if he knows anything about a new attorney,” I asked. “Tell him I’m innocent and that I was supposed to have a hearing on my petition.”
Lester always took care of things for me. He still drove to Holman every week, even though he had been turned away a few times because the prison was on lockdown or there weren’t enough guards at work that day.
Ever since I had passed around my petition, guys were sharing their appeals as well. We started to have lively legal debates on our side of the row, but it was hard to yell to each other and know exactly who was talking and to who. “Listen to this!” I yelled out my cell as I read aloud from the petition. “The kind of justice a criminal defendant has cannot depend on how much money he has.”
The guys debated this up and down the row all day.
Money determined everything, and none of us had any money.
I was showering next to a guy named Jimmy that night when he said, “Hays has money. If anyone’s going to get out of this place, it’s Hays.”
“Who’s Hays?” I asked.
“Henry. Henry Hays. The KKK guy. You know the KKK has money. He will get out.”
I walked back to my shower in shock. I knew who Henry Hays was. Everybody in Alabama knew that he and a couple of other white guys had lynched a black boy named Michael Donald in Mobile in 1981. It was the last lynching. The kid had been a teenager, nineteen years old, and the KKK was mad that a black guy on trial might get away with killing a white policeman. I thought it had been a mistrial, but I couldn’t remember. Henry Hays’s father was rumored to be the head of the KKK or something. That poor Donald boy had been randomly picked up and beaten and stabbed and then hung from a tree like a piece of meat for his mother to find. She had sued the Klan or taken some other legal action. I couldn’t remember exactly, but I remembered being sickened by the murder. Michael Donald hadn’t been much younger than I was—five or six years—and the story had reminded me of the bombs growing up and the kids who had the dogs let loose on them and the girls who had been murdered in the church. The news about the lynching had angered me.
I’d had no idea that my friend Henry was actually Henry Hays.
I went back to my cell that night and stared at the ceiling. I was Henry’s friend. He knew I was black. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to understand.
“Henry!” I yelled.
“What you want, Ray?”
“I just figured out who you are. I didn’t know.” There was no answer right away, and I wondered what Henry was thinking.
“Everything my mom and dad taught me was a lie, Ray. Everything they taught me against blacks, it was a lie.”
I didn’t know exactly what to say back to him. “You know, just about everything I believe about people, I learned from my mom.”
“So you know what I mean,” he said.
“Yeah. I do. I guess I was just lucky that my mom taught me to love people, no matter what. She taught me to forgive.”
“You was lucky, Ray. You was really lucky.”
“She taught me to have compassion for everybody, Henry, and I have compassion for you. I’m sorry your mama and your daddy didn’t teach you the same. I really am.”
“Me too.”
We didn’t say much after that, but the row was pretty quiet that night. We weren’t monsters; we were guys trying to survive the best we could. Sometimes you need to make family where you find it, and I knew that to survive I had to make a family of these men and they had to make a family of me. It didn’t matter who was black and who was white—all that kind of fell away when you lived a few feet away from an electric chair. Right now, we had more in common than not. We all faced execution. We all were scrambling to survive.
Not monsters.
Not the worst thing we had ever done.
We were so much more than what we had been reduced to—so much more than could be contained in one small cage.
On the next visiting day, Henry had a visit too. I sat with Lester and Sylvia, and we were laughing about something when I heard Henry call my name.
“Ray! Ray, come here for a second.” He gestured me over. He sat with an older couple; I assumed they were his parents.
I glanced toward the guard, but he wasn’t paying me any mind, so I walked over to Henry’s table.
“Ray, I want you to meet my father, Bennie. Dad, this is Ray Hinton. My friend.”
I held out my hand to Henry’s father. He just looked at me and then down at the table. He didn’t say hello, and he wouldn’t shake my hand.
“He’s my friend. My best friend.” Henry’s voice shook a little bit.
His mom smiled at me faintly, and then the guard yelled to me to go sit down.
“Nice to meet you both,” I said, and I walked back to my table.
“What was that all about?” asked Lester.
“That was about some progress, my friend, some crazy progress on death row.”
* * *
I imagined it took a lot for Henry to stand up to his dad. To tell him that this large black man was his best friend. We never talked about the fact that his father wouldn’t shake my hand. We just kept on living next to each other and surviving as best we could.
My new attorney came to see me a few months later. His name was Alan Black. He was from Boston. I had always been a Yankees fan.
“I’m going to ask Bryan Stevenson for some money to hire someone to test the bullets again. We need a new expert. We need to prove there’s no way your mother’s gun was used to kill those men.”
I nodded. I had thought about this before. Payne was crucified on the stand, and even though he had told the truth, no one believed him. No one would ever believe him when he couldn’t even operate the machinery or find the light on the microscope.
“I need you to get the best of the best,” I said.
Alan Black nodded and kind of laughed nervously. He didn’t look me in the eye, so while he wasn’t who I would pick as my attorney, I was grateful he was there.
“I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “I think I know a guy out of Jersey. I’ll talk to Bryan.”
>
“Okay, you do that. It might be good if you find someone from the South, though. Judges around here don’t really like guys from out of town.” I didn’t want to tell him what to do; that hadn’t worked out so well with Perhacs.
I went back to my cell after the visit, and Henry asked me how it went.
“Well, Henry, it’s like this. I can get over the fact that you used to be in the KKK, but I’m not sure I’m going to be able to get over the fact that my life is now in the hands of a Red Sox fan.”
Henry and some of the other guys started laughing.
I smiled. As long as I was making them laugh, we were all still alive.
I was tired of talking through the bars, though. I was tired of standing with my mouth pressed against dirty mesh wire every time I wanted to talk to another human.
I thought about Wallace and his Project Hope. I thought about passing my list of thirty-one reasons up and down the row.
“Henry!” I yelled.
“Yeah?”
“I’m thinking about starting a book club.”
“A what?”
“A book club. I’m going to see if we can meet in the library once a month and have ourselves a book club. You in?”
He paused a moment. “I’m in,” he said.
“I want in!” yelled a guy named Larry.
“Me too!”
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“It’s Victor. I want in. What are we going to read, though? Wouldn’t your book club just be a Bible study?”
“No, I’m going to get some real books in here. I’m going to talk to the warden, and we’re going to get some real books,” I said. “And we’re going to have ourselves a little club.”
I closed my eyes. I could leave the row in my mind, and now I was going to show these guys that they could leave too. I remember being in school and reading a book about California and getting so lost in it, I swear I could smell the salt water of the Pacific Ocean.
I just needed to get some books.
Then we could all leave this place together.
14
LOVE IS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
In preparation of the case, counsel has determined that the requested fees and costs would significantly aid in the preparation for the Rule 32 hearing and to assist him in determining whether there have been violations of the petitioner’s constitutional rights.
—ALAN BLACK, EX PARTE MOTION FOR FEES AND COSTS
The first thing Alan Black did was ask Judge Garrett for money for experts to investigate my case. Judge Garrett granted the motions, and I wondered why he would give money now in my appeal when he wouldn’t give the money in my actual trial. If I’d had money, Perhacs could have found someone better than Payne. If I’d had money, they could have had an expert prove I couldn’t have driven from work to Quincy’s that fast. If I’d had money, I could have gotten an attorney who felt like he was paid for his time. If I’d had money, I probably wouldn’t have been arrested in the first place.
It always seemed to come down to the money.
I received a copy of all my legal filings in the mail, and it was the only mail the guards couldn’t open or mess with. Any letter you wrote had to remain unsealed so the prison staff could read it before it was mailed. Any letter that came in was also read by the prison staff. Every phone call was recorded. I couldn’t understand why they had to read the letters that went out, but it became clear that they didn’t want you to complain about how you were being treated. They didn’t want someone to call in the attorneys. Holman was always short staffed, and the row was no different. We were like lab rats being closely monitored for any potential signs of revolt. It was easier for them to keep us in our cages where we couldn’t get into trouble rather than let us out. Summers were the worst. They didn’t allow any fans in our cells because they could be broken apart to use as weapons, but with the tight wire mesh covering our doors, there was zero ventilation or flow of air. It was over 100 degrees outside during the summer months, and in our cells, it had to be 110 or 120. It was like being in a sauna, and some days it felt like you were actually slow roasting. It’s hard to talk, much less fight, when it is so hot you can barely move or take a breath. Much like the staff reading our mail and recording our conversations, the heat was a way to keep control, but the heat made some guys crazy. And even more violent. I knew that all the warden wanted was to keep the peace, especially on death row, where it was assumed that we had nothing to lose and would kill if given the chance. But he was going about it all wrong, and it was having the opposite effect.
“Hinton, lunch!” The officer who yelled looked just as hot as I was, and I wondered if he wouldn’t also like some cool air blowing through the row.
“Hey, I need to ask you something,” I said.
“What’s that, Hinton?” He sounded annoyed and tired.
“I need to borrow your truck.”
“What?”
“I need to borrow your truck. Just for a little bit. I’ll bring it back with a full tank of gas, don’t you worry about that.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I know this cool little swimming hole. It’s hidden back in some trees outside of Jefferson County. There’s an old, unmarked dirt road that leads to it, so not a lot of people know about it. You have to walk a bit through the woods. It’s shady, and the water is so clear you can see right to the bottom. I think it’s fed by an underground spring or something. The water is so clear and so cool you can drink it. I’m going to need to borrow your truck, and I’ll bring it back later tonight, I promise. I just need to have myself a float in that spring water. Cool myself down, you know?”
He just stared at me, like I had finally lost it.
“Maybe we should go together? Get out of here and cool off? Otherwise, I just need your keys and you can keep working, and I’ll be back before shift change. I heard you talking about your new truck, and I promise I’ll take good care of it.”
He started laughing and shaking his head. “I don’t think so, Hinton, but here’s your lunch.”
And just like that, he was smiling at me.
“I need to talk to the warden about something,” I said, smiling back at him. “Can you get him a message or let the captain know?”
“I’ll bring you some paper, and you write it down and I’ll get it to him.”
“Thanks.”
He shook his head at me, but he was still smiling as he moved on down the row delivering lunch.
“You making friends with the guards, Ray?” I heard the scorn in Walter Hill’s voice. Hill had killed another inmate while in prison before Holman and was now on the row for a triple murder, so he was one of the guys who the warden thought had nothing to lose. He was angry all the time. I couldn’t blame him for that. I also wasn’t going to judge him. I didn’t know his story. Whatever he had done was between him and God.
“Hey, Walter!” I yelled. “You know what my sweet mama always says to me?”
Walter didn’t answer the question. “They’re not your friends, Ray. They trying to kill us, and I don’t like nobody who gets cozy with the guards. You know what I’m saying?”
I knew what he was saying. In general population, if you seemed like you were friendly to the guards, you were considered a snitch. Snitches didn’t do well in Holman. You could get your throat cut if anyone suggested you were a snitch. I didn’t know who Walter had killed in general population or why, but it didn’t matter, and I wasn’t going to let him or anyone intimidate me.
I raised my voice so they would hear me on the other side of the row. “My mama always told me that you get more flies with honey than with vinegar.”
“I heard that before,” said Victor. “I heard that too.”
“Just because you pour out some honey doesn’t mean you’re a fly. You hear me, Walter? It’s how you catch the flies. It’s how we got an extra fifteen minutes on the yard. You use the vinegar. I’m going to use the honey.”
I left
it at that. I knew the guards were doing a job. Just like I hadn’t dreamed of going into the coal mines and had hated every minute of it, I imagined most of them hadn’t grown up dreaming of someday working on death row. We were all getting through this life the best we could, and our lives had intersected right here on death row, but it was up to us to figure out what happened next. It was hell on the row—every minute of every day—but in this hell, it could always get worse. It could also get a little better. I was going to do my part to make it that way. My mama had taught me about getting flies with honey, and she had also taught me that you had to work within the system. You couldn’t grow up black in the South and not know how to work within the system. It was the same here—some people held all the power, and there were all kinds of ways you could fight back. I didn’t believe violence was ever a way to get what you wanted. It didn’t work in the real world, and it definitely didn’t work on the row. Hill was a perfect example of that, but he didn’t see it.
If I wanted the guards to cooperate, I had to cooperate. It was a trade-off. I knew others, like Hill, would take my cooperation the wrong way, but it was about survival. Not just for me but for all of us. I had people who loved me and came to visit every week. I had money on my books from Lester. I had grown up with unconditional love. I had faith and a God and a Bible that promised me I would get out of here someday. I was better off than a lot of the guys next to me. We were all facing death, but I was facing it with love all around me. I tried to focus on that more than the fact that my life had been stolen from me. I didn’t know who else was innocent. Maybe every other guy sitting in his rat cage was innocent. Who knew? Maybe every other guy in his rat cage had killed. It didn’t matter. We were slowly roasting to death, and making it worse for ourselves was not a way to get payback. It only hurt us more. I was going to do what I could with what I had. A little bit of kindness was amplified on death row, because it was so unexpected. You can scream out in a crowd of voices also screaming out, and no one hears you—but when you yell into the silence, your voice sounds louder. I was going to be that kind voice screaming out on the row, and I was going to make it better for everyone—even for Hill. We were all the same here. We were all discarded like garbage and deemed unworthy to have a life.
The Sun Does Shine Page 16