The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton [Book Summary]


Ray Hinton was mowing his mother’s lawn in Alabama on a boiling summer day during the year 1985. He wasn’t scared at the time policeman came around to put him in jail – since he was sure that he didn’t commit any crime.

The thing he wasn’t aware of was that nearly thirty years needed to be passed by before he got freedom. Hinton wasn’t aware that he would spend twenty-eight years observing how his fellow prisoners were being taken to death through an electric chair, situated just 30 yards ahead of his cell.

His book has been a textbook scenario of a failure of justice. Hinton was both a black a poor man and he had a small opportunity of victory on his first trial, regardless of obvious proof indicating his guiltlessness. He needed to go through the humiliation and psychological torment of solitary imprisonment inside death row till a persistent advocate battled for several years to guarantee his release.

Although he encountered situations that could break a lot of people, Hinton discovered a type of life, freedom, and hope inside death row. Hinton had extreme solicitude on his companion prisoners, found his own strong imagination, and especially, having hope.


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1 – Hinton was brought up around Alabama contrary to a background of racism and pressure.


During the start of the 70s around Alabama, Anthony Hinton, as well as his friends, were ready to attend a school dominated by white, after discrimination had been stopped around that state. Hinton’s mom spoke to him and warned him not to attempt to speak with white girls. Keep your face down. Be respectful to your teachers and abide by the school’s behavior. Turn back home quickly.

In Alabama, during the 1970s, raising up being a black signified facing continuous racial discrimination.

Alabama was an extremely segregated state, therefore, it was just the start of tens of years for a black to go to a restaurant, stay by the counter, and request something to eat. During the mid-70s, one could see that the servers weren’t cheerful regarding that novel plan.

Regardless of the segregation laws’ end, the 70s had been a duration at the time the danger of aggression was chronic. Hinton recalls a time they bombed a church, and he as well as the other kids needed to remain at their home. Hinton’s mom cautioned him to walk fast when he sees a car that is filled with white males and if they ever drew up near him.

Situations at his school were not that better. At a time, while in a basketball match of Hinton’s school, he scored thirty points in a ½ – a record of the school. Hinton went to the field to scream that he believed had been “Hin–ton!” However, he got a bit confused at the time he noticed that the rival’s crowd had been saying the exact cheering. That was the time he realized; they were really chanting a racial insult. Immediately, his pride became a shame.



In spite of raising up in that surroundings, Hinton possessed a happy upbringing. He was raised by his mother well, though Hinton had by no chance been an angel.

Hinton robbed an automobile around 1975. It was really dangerous hitchhiking being black, and he had to hang around. He would like to work just like the majority of young men. And he craved to go out and date women.

For 2 years, Hinton used the car until he got to know that policemen were searching for him. Hinton felt guilty, rising inside of him for some while, and he told his mom, who said to him she brought him up to accept his crimes. He gave himself to policemen and had some time in prison.

He felt relief after he confessed his guilt. However, he didn’t like the time he spent in prison. The meals were not good, his cell reeked and he detested the deficiency of freedom. He decided that prison had not been for him.


2 – Anthony was seized because of offenses he didn’t do and experienced deliberate racial discrimination from the police.

On the 23rd of February, 1985, a restaurant’s assistant manager in Birmingham was dead with gunshot two times in a robbery. On the 3rd of July, a worker of Captain D’s eatery was dead with a shot injury in his head inside a related robbery. During the early morning of the 25th of July, an administrator of Quincy’s steak restaurant named Sidney Smotherman was dead with a gun in another theft; however, he recuperated from wounds. 

Smotherman labeled his assailant as one black male who was nearly 6 ft. tall, had a weight of about 190 pounds with a mustache. During Smotherman’s shot, Hinton had night work at a warehouse, and he had taken signature from his supervisor representing his presence on the job.

6 days following Smotherman’s shot, Hinton was cutting his mom’s lawn under the fiery sunshine. He gazed up only to recognize 2 white police officers looking at Hinton, their hands were on their guns. However, he wasn’t scared. Why should he need to? He didn’t do anything wrong.

They arrested him and took him into custody.

They put a blank sheet of paper before him when he was at the station. They told him to sign the paper and that the police officers would write his rights to the paper, hence, people were aware the police officers had explained to him what his rights of him were. He declined to give his signature. He was not senseless.

One time, one policeman said to Hinton that it does not matter if he did not commit the offense or not, since if he did not, a “brother” of him – meaning, another black male – did it. The policeman said to Hinton 5 causes made him found guilty. He was a black man; one white male would recognize him; the attorney of the district would be white a person; the judge was a white person, and his jury consisted of whites. Afterward, the policeman grinned.



As his court got closer, things didn’t seem good. The police saw an elderly gun that is for Hinton’s mom. A neighbor witnessed a police officer taking the gun, inspecting the gun, and placing a cloth in a barrel. At the time he removed the cloth, it had a lot of dirt. Hinton was aware that the gun had not been used in 25 years; however, police forensics said that the previous 3 crime incidences had bullets suitable with that gun.

A detector justified Hinton’s declarations of innocence; however, the court of law utilized the right to decline that to be utilized as a proof court. Eventually, Smotherman chose him – incorrectly – from a picture lineup.

The reality that he possessed a rigid explanation? No one cared.


3 – Anthony, who didn’t have any money, was disappointed because of his advocate and was found guilty of two cases of killing.


Anthony had been raised to believe in justice; therefore, he naturally had faith his advocate could remove him from this disorder. However, he was near to being let down.

At the core of the issue were money and race.

Hinton didn’t have any money; therefore, he was given a lawyer named Sheldon Perhacs, the advocate to be paid one thousand US dollars for being in this case. Anthony overheard him stutter that he did not attend law school only for working on unpaid cases. At the time Hinton said to Perhacs that he was not guilty, Perhacs answered that “all of you” always say this. That was very obvious that by “all of you” he was talking about black individuals.

His attorney told he needed about fifteen thousand US dollars to have an accurate criminalistics specialist to challenge the state’s results on that gun. However, this could not be done, therefore, they went with the top expert they were able to pay, Andrew Payne. He had done a series of tests and established that those bullets did not correspond with the gun. 

However, with the law court’s reexamination, Payne’s reliability was damaged. He was compelled to confess this, at the time he got to the Criminalistics lab, he did not understand how to make use of the kind of contrast microscope they possessed in the lab. To begin with, Payne had struggled to identify the bullet. Afterward, the prosecutors questioned him whether he had an eye issue, and he needed to accept that he had just one eye.



Reggie White who was a witness that hated Hinton told lies on oath in order to assist put him away. The cause was basically because at the time he was a teenager, Reggie asked a girl out who had preferred Hinton. Then, Reggie got an occupation at Smotherman’s diner, and in court, he deceitfully stated that Hinton, some weeks before that attack, questioned him on when they close and whether the restaurant earns a lot. Reggie received a sum of $5,000 as a prize for helping capture the killer, however, at the court, nobody asked if this monetary incentive had been right.

Reggie, as well as the policemen, told lies. Even firearms specialists for this state told lies or did a bad job. Anthony’s advocate didn’t request character attesters and had not inquired tough inquiries.

The jury just used 2 hours to agree on the judgment: guilty. And for less than one hour, they agreed on his sentencing, which is death.


4 – Living inside death row had been without self-respect and independence.


On the 17th of December 1986, Anthony was removed from his place inside the province prison. Anthony was chained, cuffed on his wrists and ankles, and strip-searched, afterward they drove him for 3 hours to Holman prison. He walked to a prison door. On the door was written “death row.” That had been Hinton’s new place.

His dungeon was just 7 ft. high and 5 ft. wide. This dungeon only got a metal sink and toilet, a bed, a shelf, and a Bible, the copy from King James. Nothing more.

They were given breakfast at three in the morning., lunch at ten in the morning, dinner at two in the afternoon. Breakfast was talc egg, a very hard, rock-like cookie, and one spoon of something that looked like jelly. Dinner and lunch contained a flavorless pellet of distorted meat some mentioned that was a horse. Anthony was always hungry daily.

He had his bath every 2nd day, at times around evening, at times around midnight – he had no plan. He bathed with another inmate, with 2 guardians observing all the time. The shower had either boiling hot or ice-cold water all the time and was just for two minutes. One time in a day, Hinton was put to a separate enclosure inside the courtyard, to work out or stroll to and from.

Death row had been hard to withstand in the day. During the night, the place was similar to a horror film.



Creatures and rats rushed everywhere on the floor. Convicts regularly cried, shouted, or groaned – one may stop, however, another person would begin. The night was just the time an inmate can cry with secrecy. At times, somebody would chuckle madly. At the start, Anthony could not sleep for over 15 min. at a go.

Those had been the situations Hinton should encounter, in spite of he is guiltless. For 3 years, inside a condition of shock, Hinton retired in himself for 3 years, hardly saying a word to guardians or peer inmates in this period.

Hinton was optimistic of a fast and accomplished recourse contrary to his deliberately unfair sentence. However, around 1988, 2 years when he got to the place, the Crime Appeals court of Alabama confirmed his sentence. Freedom would need to wait.


5 – Inside death row, the killing was a chronic and frightening threat. 


The odor of killing and burned flesh is not similar to something else. That is a smokey, rotten combination of vomit, terrible feces, and waste. And inside a jail with nearly no airing, the odor of death remains.

Michael Lindsey was the very first man to be killed during Hinton’s imprisonment and the man was in the jail underneath Hinton’s. Prisoners take 1 month of notice before their death. On the month prior to Lindsey’s death, he kept crying. He cried both inside his jail and inside the courtyard. The sentenced guy needed to sit down and observe how guardians exercised their habit in his death day, parading from the row, gathering a guard acting like Lindsey, and directing him to the holding place. 

Lindsey wept as guardians exercised by switching on the electric chair’s generator, and he wept as jail’s lights sparkled under the pressure of the voltage.



Hinton saw and heard this whole thing. There was no choice for him – death row had been a little environment, and the death chamber was only 30 ft. far away from his jail.

At the time a sentenced man was sat down on the electric chair, other inmates uttered as much voice as they could. Some of them would like to protest, shouting at the guardians, telling them killers. Others only shouted similar to animals. Anthony basically would like the killed guy to hear those voices and realize in that darkest instant, buckled on an electric chair inside a black pocket covering his head, that guy wasn’t alone.

At the time Lindsey’s death came, and the odor wandered into the cell, Anthony spent that day vomiting. He was emotionally and physically ill. A guardian mocked him when he noticed how Hinton’s reacted. The guard mentioned that one day, everybody will smell you as well.On the 19th of June 1989, Hinton got a mail from Perhacs his attorney. The letter explained that a recourse to get another trial was rejected and Perhacs cannot represent him anymore. Justice looked far away.


6 – Hinton discovered that, regardless of their several distinctions, everybody inside death row possessed a mutual thing more than nothing.


Experiencing death row inside a private cell, one does not essentially know a lot regarding the other prisoners in near cells.

One day, Anthony was surprised to know that a fellow prisoner, someone he considered as a fellow, had done the last killing of someone black inside the US. Around 1981, he, Henry Hays, abducted, beaten, and wounded a teenage black guy, and suspended him on a tree. This guy had been one of the guys of the hate organization of white supremacists, the Klan of Ku Klux, and this guy’s parents were in the leadership of that team.

Anthony cried out to Henry from his personal cell, telling him he had only realized who this person had been. There had been quietness until Hays screamed back that all the things his mother and father had taught – all the prejudgment and hate against black people – was all lie. Hinton pondered. Then he answered. Hinton said he’d been fortunate. He’d also learned all the things from his mother; however, she’d taught loving others, and not detesting, and forgiving and having empathy. He told him that he was upset that Henry did not experience the exact thing.


During the following visiting day that followed, Hays was with his mother and father, and he told Hinton to come over. Hays said to his mother and father that he would like them to see Ray Hinton, a person he considered as his favorite peer. Hay’s mother smiled slightly; however, his dad would not even shake hands with Hinton and didn’t utter any word.

Hinton went back to his visitor a friend of his, Lester, a person who inquired him regarding the discussions. Hinton mentioned that it was about development.

Inside death row, Anthony realized that the thing you possess mutually with fellow prisoners has been more powerful than the thing that separates you. Whether guilty or innocent, white or black, everybody is fighting to survive, and fighting to accept how they got to jail.

Henry was killed around June 1997. That had been the initial time ever in more than 85 years, a white person was killed for murdering a black person, and his killing was an important instance outside the jail. However, to Hinton, that was only the killing of yet another friend.


7 – By imagining and through books, Hinton discovered a type of freedom inside death row.


A lot of prisoners fantasize about escaping; however, that never occurs. Hinton was fortunate. He discovered methods to escape, although he could not get out of the jail.

Hinton found the influence of his imaginative power at the time he was in jail.

While he was on his bed, one day he pondered on the places he would like to go when he could leave prison. He fantasized about getting into an individual jet, outside the jail, ready for him. An aircraft member gave him a drink and said to him that they were going to London because England’s Queen would like to see him. Hours after, he was on a comfortable sofa, drinking tea, talking to England’s Queen regarding what he lived inside death row.

Anthony was eventually shoved out of those dreams with a guardian’s scream telling Anthony had somebody visiting him, and he got to know that he was wandering in dreamland for 2 days. That thought that Hinton could get out, at least inside his brain, felt good.

Years after, Hinton withdrew more and more into the environment of fantasies. He was a player for Yankees, defeated Wimbledon, got married to Halle Berry an actress, and divorced for Sandra Bullock. That was not similar to being free, however, that was a method to leave death row – which was something.



Hinton had knowledge on the way he might assist everybody inside the row in finding a tiny getaway. He would like to begin a reading club. He said to the custodian that it was for making the prisoners silent and peaceful. However, he actually wanted to assist them to escape and let them become more intelligent.

The custodian approved, and after some weeks, 2 copies from James Baldwin came in. For like one month, 7 of the prisoners rotated those books to one another. When it was time for that reading club gathering, the 7 guys were permitted to gather inside a room. That was the initial time they were allowed to speak with one another with no scream from one cell to another cell.

Discussing the book offered the prisoners freedom. Initially, they spoke about something different from legal things, advocates, and if they could ever leave the prison. They were taken to another place.

The reading club was a freedom from the daily pain of death row; however, that wasn’t entire freedom. A prisoner called Larry had been the initial participant of their reading gathering to be killed. During the following gathering of the reading club, Anthony left Larry’s place, sitting blank.


8 – A determined lawyer dedicated to justice offered Hinton new expectancy.


Until 1997, Anthony experienced few advocates and a sequence of unsuccessful legal trials to obtain an appeal. Anthony’s new advocate had explained to him he believed he might obtain him an offer: life without bail.

Hinton’s feedback? He dismissed him. Hinton had no concern about having life inside the jail for a murder he didn’t do.

He was aware of who the person would like to appear for him precisely, but: a determined and kind lawyer called Bryan Stevenson advocated fights for prisoners inside death row.

Stevenson directed the Initiative of Equal Justice around Montgomery, Alabama. Anthony had known about him in 1989. During that year, one Vietnam retired soldier had been killed, and Hinton heard that this advocate was that inmate’s legal counsel, and had remained with the inmate until the finish, battling to stop his killing.

In 1988, Hinton convinced Stevenson for taking his case. For the following sixteen years, these two went through an unending series of analyses in distinct courts, looking for a method to stress an appeal and guarantee Hinton’s way out the jail.

Stevenson extracted rock-solid proof of problems with Anthony’s trial and arrest.

He discovered police officers had forced witnesses to state that Anthony had been at the place of the murder. Besides, Smotherman – the restaurant’s injured administrator – had recognized Anthony as the one to attack from a picture of Anthony, with Anthony’s initials engraved on the picture. That was only when detectives had told Smotherman Anthony’s name and said to him Anthony was suspected. Meaning, the spotting was a compromise.



Moreover, Perhacs – the initial advocate of Hinton – was a friend of the prosecutor of the state, and that prosecutor had been proven guilty twice of unlawful differentiation contrary to black individuals at the time of jury choices.

Furthermore, Stevenson discovered 3 ballistics specialists to examine the proof of that gun. According to Hinton’s mind, they were completely white males: 2 Southerners and a specialist working at the FBI. These people were the accurate type of individuals to convince the court of Alabama. The 3 of the people examined the proof, and each of them said that the bullets didn’t correspond with Hinton’s mom’s gun.

However, regardless of the dimensions of proof pro-Hinton’s guiltlessness, progression was extremely slow.


9 – Finally, a ruling of the Supreme Court offered the development Hinton had been longing for. 


Lawcourts do not operate fast, specifically at the time they are looking at retrials of death-row prisoners in Alabama.

This did not help Alabama state was keen to have Hinton imprisoned. The state actually would not like to accept its mistake. For them to agree to their error would mean to accept that Alabama state had intentionally and purposely imprisoned a guiltless black person inside the death row.

Prior to the vital hearing being scheduled in 2002, Alabama’s office of attorney general summoned a writ trying to terminate the case. Alabama’s attorney general mentioned that for them to start this case would probably waste two to three days’ value of taxpayer’s funds. At the time this was abortive, and the case was brought to law court, the vital question was if Hinton had experienced an insufficient defense. 

The state then claimed that there was nothing mistaken with Hinton’s initial criminalistics specialists. 16 years before, in the initial lawsuit, they defamed the expert’s status. They were now arguing that they were perfectly trustworthy from the start; hence, Hinton did not experience insufficient protection, and there had not been a point looking at the view of the fresh, more persuading specialists that Stevenson employed.

Eventually, the lawsuit was futile. For 2 years, the judge did not open the case, vindicating no judgment, actually not bothered that the destiny of an individual inside death row depended mostly on him. Eventually, the judge passed a directive that was in favor of the state.

A lot of time passed. Anthony observed further people being taken to be killed and it was difficult to keep his belief in what tomorrow brings.



Around 2013, Hinton and Stevenson finally determined to apply to the American Supreme Court for claiming his guiltlessness. That had been a risky choice since when the court overruled their defense, their verdict would be the end one. Another court would never open the case. However, Hinton would not like to use another 10 years struggling the case with lower courts, therefore, around October 2013, they filed to the American Supreme Court. This was their final trial at justice.

In February of the next year, Hinton got a phone from Stevenson. That was actually good news – as a matter of fact, greater than what they had anticipated. The American Supreme Court solidly directed that Anthony’s attorney gave a poor performance according to the constitution – meaning, he had really made him fail – and courts of the state need to review if these failures had biased Hinton’s lawsuit.

That was not the conclusion of Hinton’s trial, however, that had been the start of fresh anticipation for tomorrow.


10 – Hinton stepped freely into the daylight with the state withdrawing the charges made against him.


In February 2015, Anthony had used twenty-nine years inside a private jail inside death row of Holman jail. He had seen fifty-four individuals walk near to his jail’s door to be dead.

At the time he was told to go back to the county prison to wait for his retrial, he left his jail, Hinton shouted to his peer prisoners.

Not a lot of thing inside death row calls for celebration, however, the last days were happy times. Anthony had given out his TV, food, books, and the additional clothes he had to his fellow prisoners. He then screamed that he could leave. He said it took 30 years for arriving at that point. Perhaps for those people, it would require thirty-one or thirty-two years.  However, they shouldn’t quit hoping.

The inmates hit their jail bars and shouted his surname. For a minute, Hinton remembered his basketball game at high school, during the mass had repeated a racial insult rather than his surname. He thought about the crazy mixture of disaster, joy, and sorrow of his life.

Turning back to the county prison, Hinton held on for months to his fresh trial, experiencing more delays still.

At a point, a delay was put for the reason that the attorney’s office of the district misplaced the bullets and the gun from the initial case, and ridiculously blamed Stevenson for stealing those. The state had still been resolute against Hinton’s release.



Hinton was wanted to make a call to Stevenson one day, and while they were talking, he noticed his exciting voice. Stevenson stated that, without a lot of words to anybody, the state silently filed documents to tell them they were canceling the charges against Hinton’s. Hinton could get released on the morning of Friday.

Hinton fell and cried with relief.

On that Friday which was the 3rd of April 2015, Hinton, dressed in a black suit Stevenson had gotten him, Hinton went outside.

Hinton gave his favorite peer, Lester a hug, and hugged his sisters and nieces. As he watched the faces of the people around, he got to know that none of them would tell him the things he should and shouldn’t or do.

Hinton was free at last.


11 – In the world outside, Hinton has discovered uneasy liberty and a dedication to forgiveness.


Lester took him from the jail, Hinton flipped a bit when a female’s sound explained to them for turning left. Hinton asked who the woman was and where she was hiding. Lester looked at him emptily for a moment and laughed, he then told him that that was the GPS. 30 years of being in prison, Anthony possessed a lot of things to learn.

During his initial night at home, while he lied down on the most comfortable bed he had ever felt, his breath started to come faster. He began to feel anxious. He stood up and rushed to the bath. While he sat down on the floor of the bathroom, attempting to soothe himself, he realized that the bath had been the exact size of his prison place. He stretched, put his head to the bath mat, determined to pass the night there. That sensed similar to home.

Getting his independence taken from him, Hinton now makes a regular excuse for him, outside of dread that the exact thing could occur again. He intentionally keeps a record of each instance – passing nearby security cams, phoning others to tell them regarding his place, and regularly taking receipts anywhere he shops.



However, strangely, Hinton has accepted mercy.

The person who accused Hinton, probably aware that Hinton was guiltless, released a book prior to his death. In his book, he mentioned that he identified Hinton as an evil, a smart murderer only by staring at him. He has also acquitted the prosecutor, similar to how he acquitted his initial advocate, judges, and all the other people who assisted in putting him to jail. His mom raised him up with forgiveness, as well as his life in jail.

Finally, death row gave Hinton that, it’s important how we decide to experience this life. That is important if we decide to hate or love, to harm or assist people. It is important since, a day, our lives might just transform endlessly in just an instance. You could never expect it.


The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row by Anthony Ray Hinton, Lara Love Hardin Book Review


The only crime of Hinton’s was that he was an indigent black individual in Alabama. Alabama would like to kill him and was unconcerned in seeing other than his skin color to notice his guiltlessness. He didn’t give up anticipating, and he discovered a type of freedom and life inside death row. However, the fact is that a guiltless individual doesn’t need to experience the things Hinton experienced.


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Savaş Ateş

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