Ray’s belief in God is a driving factor throughout his life, even on death row, when he hears others being executed “just down the hall” or even when he is informed of his mother’s death towards the end. Thirty years in a prison cell closely upheld Ray’s relentless spirit due to his belief and faith in the inherent essence of truth and justice to prevail, even though the place socially and mentally exiled him. Ray was finally released in 2015 by the orders of the US Supreme Court and this book is a valuable account of how “the sun does shine” in a period of waiting and exile. Ironically, Ray’s presence at his workplace during the time of the two murders or even during the robbery, and the chance for his mother or friends to step forward during his trial initially was dismissed, leading him to death row at Holman Prison. Ray was arrested in 1985, being accused of committing two murders and a robbery in South Alabama, due to the many misgivings in his case – being Black, the uninterested State defendant and the incompetent expert, the inefficiency of the justice system in the country, mounted by the inability of this system to correct its mistakes unless provoked by lawyers like Bryan. It is his journey from his teens to his adulthood, the most of latter being lost while waiting for justice from death row accompanied by the untiring hope of his mother, his best friend, Lester and the efforts of his later attorney, Bryan Stevenson. Hinton’s book is not just another tragic incident that puts an innocent Black man in prison to capture the brutality of racism and injustice, but it is a story of “Belief. Have you ever read a book where the foreword narrates the gist of the entire story ahead, but instead of putting it aside, you become even more keen to immerse yourself in it? This is what Anthony Ray Hinton’s chronicle, The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row, entails as he hopefully waits for justice and freedom in the span of thirty years for a crime which he did not even commit.
Book: The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton with Lara Love Hardin, New York: St.
0 kommentar(er)
