Lester was quiet for a minute or so. He looked down at the ground and then took a breath. “You are going to need that,” he said. And then he gave me a big smile. “How should I go about getting it? I will mail it to you, but tell me where to find it.”
“You know God can do everything but fail, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Well, God is going to have to release me or be proven a liar.”
“How do you figure that?”
“‘What things so ever you desire when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you shall have them.’ Mark 11:24,” I said.
Lester smiled. He knew this was my favorite, and I had talked about it a million times before. “What about it?”
“God can’t fail. Therefore, this scripture has to be true, and I have to be set free or God is a liar because he would have failed.”
“You’re trying to trap God in some kind of loophole?” Lester laughed. “Man, you really should’ve been a lawyer.”
“Maybe I will be. Maybe I will get out of here, go to law school, and start working with Bryan to start freeing all these innocent men up in here. Put an end to the death penalty once and for all. Maybe I will.” I was forty-six years old, and we both knew I was too old to go to law school even if I walked out of there with Bryan. “Or maybe I will open up a restaurant. You know I can cook.”
“Yeah, what are you going to call this restaurant of yours?”
“Behind Bars, or the Death Row Grill.” I started laughing.
“That’s just sick now; nobody wants to eat what they’re grilling up on death row.”
“People would eat my barbecue no matter where I was grilling it. Even the guards are having me cook them some meals in their break room. Gets me out of my cell, and I can work on my menu for when I walk out of here.”
“Okay. I’ll get you your birth certificate. I’ll talk to your sister.”
“Why don’t you ask my mom? She might have it.”
A shadow passed over Lester’s face for a brief second. There was something there that I didn’t want to look at or think about.
“Okay. I’ll ask them both, and I’ll get it.”
I looked over at Sylvia, who was smiling as big as could be. “What are you smiling at?”
“You’re going to walk out of here, Ray. We all know it. And it’s going to be a happy day. A bright day. It’s going to be soon. We’ll get the birth certificate, and then you can come to our house and cook us some dinner.”
“You’d better count on it,” I said.
* * *
It was September 22, 2002, when the captain of the guards came to my cell.
“Ray, I got some news for you.”
I stood and looked at him standing in my doorway, and I felt my heart begin to pound. It wasn’t news of my release. I had seen enough death in there to know the way it showed on a man’s face. He had death on his face, and even before he said it, the screaming began in my head.
“It’s your mom, Ray. She died today. We just got word. I’m sorry. The other guards and I want to offer our condolences.”
I didn’t say a word. The screaming in my head was so loud I just wanted him to leave so I could put the pillow over my ears. I turned my back to him and walked a few feet to stand over my bed. I leaned over at the waist, my palms resting on the bed. I wondered if I was going to pass out. He cleared his throat, and then I heard his footsteps walk away.
I cried quietly at first. And then it was as if my body were possessed, because it started shaking so hard I couldn’t even hold my hand in front of my face. Maybe I was having a seizure. I didn’t care. I felt my stomach turn over, and I ran to the toilet, thinking I might throw up. I wanted my mama. She was dead. I couldn’t understand what kind of world this was now. I was nothing. I was nobody. I was Buhlar Hinton’s son, and Buhlar Hinton was dead. I started sobbing, the deepest cries I have ever felt. It was like my body was turning itself inside out. She had died and I wasn’t there. I couldn’t live with that. I couldn’t even breathe with that thought. I wasn’t there. I was here, and I didn’t get to hold my mom as she passed. I would never get to hold her again. I couldn’t tell her I loved her. I couldn’t tell her goodbye.
When are they going to let you come home, baby?
I could hear her voice.
Soon, Mama. I’m going to be home soon.
I had lied to my mom. I hadn’t come home. Not soon. Not ever. I had lied to her, and she had died without me to take care of her. I pushed my face into my pillow and let the tears fall until it was so wet I wondered if my tear ducts had split wide open. None of it mattered anymore. Bryan. The hearing. Whether I lived or I died. Getting out of here. What did it matter? My mama was dead. I was going home to her, and she had gone home first. It felt like a million razors were slicing through my chest. Maybe I could have a heart attack. I could drop dead and be with her in moments.
I’ll be home soon, Mama. I promise.
I don’t know how long I cried. When I lifted my head up, the lights were out. I knew word had gotten around the row, but I had ignored people trying to send me coffee and I had ignored their condolences. I just didn’t care anymore. I wasn’t going to recover from this one. I couldn’t go somewhere in my mind and pretend my mother wasn’t dead. Sandra Bullock wasn’t real, and she wasn’t there to comfort me. I was Ray Hinton. A condemned man on death row who couldn’t convince anyone he was innocent.
I lay on my back for hours, and then I heard a deep voice say, “The only person who believed you were innocent is gone.”
I nodded, and the voice continued.
“Why keep fighting? Why let them execute you? Take away their power. There’s nothing to live for now. Let Bryan Stevenson save someone else. There’s no use in staying here. They are never going to let you leave. You’re just a poor, dumb nigger, and no one cares if you live or die. They’re going to kill you one way or another.”
On and on the voice went, and I listened to it. I listened to it until it took me to the darkest place I had ever been, darker than those first three years on the row. My mother was always the flicker of light in those years, but now there was nothing but darkness. Flatness. It was like all light ceased to exist. There was no hope. There was no love. My life was over, and I knew this in the quiet way you know some things to be true. I had failed. There was nothing left inside me to keep me going. I didn’t want to live. I didn’t deserve to live. I didn’t have the strength to live. They had won, and I was okay with that. I was ready to go.
I took a deep breath. My face felt raw in the darkness. My eyes were swollen and gritty. I just had to figure out how to do it. I was too tired to smash my own head in. I didn’t have anything sharp to cut my wrists. I would have to hang myself somehow. It would be morning soon, and then I would wrap the sheet around my neck and find some way to hang myself in my cell.
“Boy, I didn’t raise no quitter!” I heard my mother’s voice loud and sharp, and I automatically flinched because I knew that tone of voice always preceded a smack upside the head. I sat up in my bed.
“I didn’t raise a quitter, and you’re not going to quit.”
I looked around my cell in the darkness. I didn’t believe in ghosts, but I could hear my mama’s voice as plain as the day is long.
“You’re going to get out of here. You’re going to keep fighting.”
“I’m tired, Mama; I want to be with you,” I whispered. “I want to hurt them like they’ve hurt us. They want to kill me, and I don’t want to give them that chance.”
“There’s a time to live and a time to die. This is my time to die. No use crying about it. You knew I had cancer. You didn’t want to talk about it, but you knew.”
I started crying again. She was right.
“This isn’t your time to die, son. It’s not. You have work to do. You have to prove to them that my baby is no killer. You have to show them. You are a beacon. You are the light. Don’t you listen to that fool devil telling you to giv
e up. I didn’t raise no child of mine to give up when things get tough. Your life isn’t your life to take. It belongs to God. You have work to do. Hard work. I’m going to talk at you all night long if I have to and all day and all night again, and I will never stop until you know who you are. You were not born to die in this cell. God has a purpose for you. He has a purpose for all of us. I’ve served my purpose.”
I cried softly as she talked.
“Now you wipe them tears, Ray, and you get up and you get in service to someone else. There’s no time to be crying about yourself. There’s no cause to be listening to the devil’s voice in your head telling you that nothing matters. It all matters. You matter. You are my baby, and you matter more than anything in the world. When I’m done talking at you, I’m going to be talking at God. He’s going to listen to me, if I have to talk to him for all eternity. He’s going to get you out of there, or he’s going to have a hard time of it, that’s for sure.”
“Okay, Mama. Okay,” I whispered.
“Don’t disappoint me, Ray. I taught you to believe in yourself even if no one else in the world believes in you. Do you believe in you? Do you?”
I nodded in the darkness.
“Well, then, the next time that devil tells you to wrap a bedsheet around your neck, you tell him to go to hell where he belongs.”
I laughed softly. “Yes, Mama.”
“I’m going to talk to God, and we’re going to give Mr. Bryan Stevenson a little help from here. There’s a time to live and a time to die, Ray.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“And it will never be your time to die in that place. Never.”
“Yes, Mama.”
“I’m not fooling this time, Ray. Don’t make me come back here.”
I fell asleep then, a deep, dreamless sleep, and when I woke up, it was long after breakfast, almost time for lunch.
The gifts started arriving immediately after I woke up. Coffee. Chocolate. Sweets of all kinds. Cards. Books. Death row was holding its own memorial in the only way it knew how. “She loved you a lot, Ray. I’ve never seen a mother love her son more.”
“She’s proud of you.”
“Rest in peace, Ray.”
“I’m sorry, Ray.”
“My condolences, Ray.”
All through the day and into the night, men shouted out their words of sympathy. Sorrow shared is sorrow lessened.
And then I heard Jimmy Dill. “Ray!” he yelled. “Can you help me with something?”
I took a deep breath. My mama told me to be in service to someone else.
“What do you need?”
“In the book, it says, ‘They’ve done it before and they did it tonight and they’ll do it again and when they do it—seems that only children weep.’ What does that mean, exactly?”
I smiled. It seemed book club had started. “Well, Atticus says that after the verdict, right?”
“Yeah.”
“I think it’s because only the child cries when an innocent man is convicted. All the adults just accept it. It’s happened before, and it will happen again. What do you think?” I asked.
“I think that’s right, Ray. I think that’s right. But here’s what I want to say. Just because they’ve done it before and they’ll do it again doesn’t mean you stop fighting, right? I don’t think it’s something people should ever get used to, do you?”
“I don’t think people should get used to injustice,” I said.
“You know what we have to do then, Ray, right? You know what we always have to do?”
“What’s that?”
“You have to fight, Ray. You have to never stop fighting.”
And if I didn’t know better, I would have thought that the voice of my mother was coming out of a convicted killer on death row by the name of Jimmy Dill.
20
DISSENT
It’s really bad that it’s gone on this long without a final resolve on it, and I’ll take part of the responsibility for that.
—JUDGE JAMES GARRETT, JANUARY 28, 2002
Phoebe, Lester’s mom, came to visit me after my mom died, and even though it wasn’t supposed to be allowed, the guards looked the other way as she put her arms around me and held me as I cried all over her shoulder. Lester kept clearing his throat and wiping at his eyes. My mom was also his mom, and he had taken care of her for almost twenty years. I had lost my mom, and Lester’s mom had lost her best friend.
“I want you to know something, Ray,” she said, patting me on the back like she used to do when I was a little boy. “One of us is always going to be here, until the very end. No matter what, one of us will always be here. Do you understand?”
I nodded and swallowed my tears. I was grateful to have them. How could I have survived this long without them?
“No matter what,” she said again, and then she kissed me one last time on the top of my head.
When she passed away a couple of years later, Lester and I cried together and then had a good laugh about how God was really in trouble now. There was going to be no sleep or peace in heaven until those two women got their way and God set me free.
We had no word from Judge Garrett. Bryan wrote letter after letter, filed brief after brief, and still nothing. After a year, he decided that pressure from the public might be the only way to get the State to do the right thing, and he began contacting the media about my story.
November 19, 2003
Anthony Ray Hinton, Z-468
Holman State Prison
Holman, 3700
Atmore, Alabama 36503
Dear Ray:
How are you? I hope you’re hanging in there. I wanted to update you on a couple of matters. Judge Garrett, as you know, has retired effective November 1. We heard that he would keep some cases and give others to different judges. While we can’t get any definite indication, it appears as if he intends to keep your case. Following the debate I had with Pryor, I pressed him for what he was willing to do. He has indicated that they won’t do anything but wait for Judge Garrett’s ruling. While this is disappointing, it’s not surprising.
Today, I’ve sent a letter to the chief deputy district attorney just so that we can represent to the press that these folks have had every opportunity to do the right thing. Our experts have similarly pressed the guy the State brought to your hearing from the Department of Forensic Sciences about doing something. No one appears to want to claim any responsibility, so we will have to put more pressure on them publicly.
I’m meeting with someone from The New York Times next week about an article, and I think we’ll also work with someone from a national magazine. 60 Minutes is supposed to call Pryor this week. I’m worried about them because they keep talking about the war with Iraq and are becoming somewhat vague on when they’ll actually do something. Anyway, I’m supposed to talk with them again on Friday.
I’ll be down to see you during the first week of December because we will likely need to facilitate some interviews between you and the Times reporter and the magazine reporter next month. I want to talk to you some about that before it begins.
Things have been typically busy here, but we’re pressing on. I look forward to seeing you, my friend.
Sincerely,
Bryan A. Stevenson
Another nine months passed, and we still had no answer on my Rule 32 hearing. Bryan was frustrated, and I tried to imagine how he could hold up with so many lives depending on him. I kept telling him that if things didn’t turn out the way we wanted, I knew he had done everything he could. Eventually, he went straight to the source.
September 23, 2004
Judge James Garrett
c/o Anne-Marie Adams, Clerk
Jefferson County Circuit Court
207 Criminal Justice Center
801 N. Richard Arrington, Jr. Blvd.
Birmingham, AL 35203
Dear Judge Garrett:
I’m writing to inquire about the status of the Anthony Ray Hinton case. As you know, Mr.
Hinton is on Alabama’s death row, although we maintain and have presented evidence that he is innocent and had nothing to do with these crimes. Over two years ago, we presented evidence in support of Mr. Hinton’s claim of factual innocence. I know that since that time you have retired, which is why I’m writing to determine the status of this case and whether you are still reviewing the case. We filed a renewed motion for a judgment granting relief on February 23, 2004, and we have not been able to confirm from the clerk’s office whether you received that pleading or our subsequent requests for a ruling.
While I appreciate that the length of time required in death penalty cases has been an issue for lots of people, we’re especially concerned about this case because we believe that the evidence clearly supports Mr. Hinton’s innocence and that he has now been wrongly held on Alabama’s death row for nineteen years.
I would greatly appreciate it if you could inform the parties of the case status or determine what, if any, other arrangements have been made for a resolution of this case. I’m sorry to disturb you with a letter of this sort, but I genuinely believe that Mr. Hinton is innocent and this case represents a terrible mistake.
I appreciate your consideration of this matter and sincerely hope that all is well with you.
Respectfully,
Bryan A. Stevenson
Counsel for Anthony Ray Hinton
cc:James Houts, Assistant Attorney General
Jon Hayden, Assistant Attorney General
J. Scott Vowell, Presiding Judge
Time kept marching on, and then finally, after hearing nothing for two and a half years, Judge Garrett finally issued a ruling. Bryan sent me a letter at the end of January. I read it aloud to the other guys. A couple of the guards stood in the hallway listening as well.
January 28, 2005
Anthony Ray Hinton, Z-468
Holman State Prison
Holman, 3700
Atmore, Alabama 36503
Dear Ray:
We’ve looked at Garrett’s ruling and determined that it is a verbatim, word-for-word replication of the State’s proposed order. In effect, he waited two and one-half years and then just signed the State’s proposed order that was filed on August 26, 2002. Garrett let all this time go by and then just signed the State’s order. It’s clear that he wasn’t working on anything when he told the presiding judge he would get something out by the end of December. While it’s not surprising, it builds another layer into the worst example of corrupt, unjust administration of the death penalty anywhere. We knew not to expect much from him in terms of relief, but he didn’t have to unnecessarily take another two and a half years of your life for no good reason.
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