The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row

by Anthony Ray Hinton

There’s no sadder place to be in this world than a place where there’s no hope.

The good old boys had traded in their white robes for black robes, but it was still a lynching.

KKK to prosecutor

Martin Luther King once said, “A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent.”

Sometimes it felt like life was more a process of elimination than a series of choices.

I knew it was wrong to lie to her, but I believe that lies told to ease pain or protect someone’s heart are lies that need to be told.

I didn’t know Michael Lindsey, but I wanted him to know he wasn’t alone. I wanted him to know that I saw him and knew him and his life meant something and so did his death.

Despair was a choice. Hatred was a choice. Anger was a choice. I still had choices, and that knowledge rocked me. I may not have had as many Lester had, but I still had some choices. I could choose to give up or to hang on. Hope was a choice. Faith was a choice. And more than anything else, love was a choice. Compassion was a choice.

I was born with the same gift from God we are all born with—the impulse to reach out and lessen the suffering of another human being. It was a gift, and we each had a choice whether to use this gift or not.

Everything, I realized, is a choice. And spending your days waiting to die is no way to live.

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.

We were all facing death, but I was facing it with love all around me.

It was a gift to spend time in your mind away from your own reality.

There was no past and no future on the row. We only had the moment we were in, and when you tried to survive moment to moment, there wasn’t the luxury of judgment.

“No one is beyond redemption,” he would say. No one is undeserving of their own life or their own potential to change.

Don’t be too discouraged, the race is not given to the quick but to the one who endures.

What I didn’t understand was how any killing could be justified. Man didn’t have the right to take a life. The State didn’t have the right to take a life either.

I was afraid every single day on death row. And I also found a way to find joy every single day. I learned that fear and joy are both a choice.

Maybe this is the plan. Maybe I was born to live most of my life in a five-by-seven so I could travel the world. I would have never won Wimbledon if I hadn’t gone to death row.

My mind goes back there every single day, and I realize it was easier for my mind to leave the row when I was inside than it is now that I’m free.

Because there’s no way to know the exact second your life changes forever. You can only begin to know that moment by looking in the rearview mirror. And trust me when I tell you that you never, ever see it coming.

Remember none of us are the worst thing we have done, and right now, wherever you are, whoever you are, you can reach out to your fellow man or woman and bring your own light to the dark places.