Imagine living day in and day out in a closet or a space the size of a small bathroom. With only six by nine feet to move and no ability to leave, what would you do hour after hour, month after month? That was Anthony Ray Hinton’s reality for thirty years while he sat on death row for a crime he didn’t commit. With the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us experienced the challenge of limited mobility and social contact. But that was nothing in comparison to the agonizing confinement Hinton experienced. How does a human being live in a tiny, concrete box for thirty years and come out sane?
Born in Alabama, Hinton was the youngest of ten siblings raised by a single mom. He had a close relationship with his mother and was living with her when, at the age of 29, he was violently taken from his relatively tranquil life and thrown in prison. Hinton did not even know about the murders that had taken place fifteen miles away while he worked his graveyard shift at a warehouse—his employers kept the building locked and required employees to clock in. Yet despite his clear alibi, he did not see freedom again for three decades.
Hinton was subjected to the torture of living on death row while racist officials rigged the system. The authorities wanted a scapegoat, someone to appease the public in the face of the murders. They did not care who did it. A prosecutor even admitted that he judged Hinton not so much on evidence, but by his appearance, which he deemed “evil.” Hinton is black. Even after three of the nation’s top firearm experts testified that the bullets found at the murder scenes could not be matched to a revolver stored (unused) in Hinton’s mother’s house, authorities tried to cover their mistake by keeping Hinton on death row for thirteen more years.
While he was in prison, Hinton’s mother, who prayed every day for her son’s release, died without being able to see him freed. He was not able to attend her funeral or care for her as he had been doing before he was unjustly arrested and imprisoned. Only after the relentless work of attorney Bryan Stevenson, was Anthony Ray Hinton exonerated and released in 2015. But freedom was bittersweet; nothing could restore the years taken from him or remedy the trauma inflicted.
Jesus said that whatever we do to the “least of” our fellow human beings we are doing to him (Matt 25:31–46). In Hinton, we see Christ’s arrest all over again. We see the same false accusations, unjust trial, torture, and death sentence. As we contemplate Jesus’s arrest, we do not recall a distant tragedy, we reflect on how injustice continues today. Jesus’s face can be seen in Anthony Ray Hinton and the countless other men and women who have suffered under corruption within the criminal justice system.
For more on Anthony Ray Hinton, see his memoir, The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (2018).