I made a trip to the Mississippi Delta last month. During the seven-hour drive, I had the opportunity to listen to the story of Anthony Ray Hinton on the radio. Anthony Ray Hinton was a Black man falsely accused of a double robbery homicide in 1985. He subsequently spent nearly 29 years on Alabama’s death row. It seemed to be that his only crime was being Black and poor. His race and socioeconomic status placed him at the bottom of an American caste system that Isabelle Wilkerson so poetically wrote about in her novel, “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent,” a sequel to the Pulitzer prize-winning text, “The Warmth of Other Suns.”
I listened as Mr. Hinton told a familiar story: He lacked the resources to hire a lawyer and was therefore assigned a court-appointed attorney. The result was a guilty verdict in less than one hour of jury deliberation. The jury verdict was 10-2, and because the state of Alabama does not require a unanimous verdict to sentence someone to death row, Mr. Hinton’s fate was sealed. I listened as Mr. Hinton told his story of how he was taught by his mother to always tell the truth. His mother would not live to see his release from prison in 2015. His belief that truth would triumph over injustice sustained him on death row. I listened as Mr. Hinton told of how, if not for his faith in the truth, God, and his vivid imagination, he would have surely gone insane. Instead, he spoke of how he imagined himself in ideal settings outside the confines of prison. Even at one point, he stated that he imagined himself married to Halle Berry.
In 1998, Mr. Hinton started to receive legal representation from the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit organization that provides legal services to indigent defendants and prisoners. In 2014, following a reexamination of the evidence, the U.S. Supreme Court vacated Mr. Hinton’s convictions and ordered a new trial, ultimately resulting in his freedom in 2015.
The next night, after arriving in Memphis, I attended the theatre adaptation of Harper Lee’s novel, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” at the Orpheum Theatre. “To Kill a Mockingbird” tells the story of a Black man, Tom Robinson, in the fictional town of Maycomb, Ala., who is falsely accused of raping a White woman, Mayella Ewell. During a pivotal scene in Tom’s trial, during a heated cross-examination by the prosecution, Tom was repeatedly asked why he would take the time to help Mayella when he knew the risks. Ultimately Tom broke down and told the jury that it was because he felt sorry for Mayella. There was stunned silence. Everyone in the courtroom, including Tom and attorney Atticus Finch, knew that the trial was over and that Tom would be found guilty. As I watched this story unfold on stage, I pondered that someone’s guilt or innocence could hinge on their compassion for another human being. We need to look no further than Emmitt Till for proof.
As I continued to reflect on the play, I was reminded of Mr. Hinton. The parallels were frightening. How was Tom Robinson’s story any different than Anthony Ray Hinton’s? Both were Black men falsely accused of crimes in the state of Alabama. Both faced death if convicted. Both believed that the truth would ultimately set them free, and both fell victim to a legal injustice system. A system that remains such today. In a recent court case, which came to be known as the kids-for scandal, judges knowingly sentenced Black youth. According to reports, these youth were sentenced to for-profit detention centers for petty crimes such as jaywalking and truancy.
In some cases, the youth were sentenced without having the opportunity for a defense. Consider that behavior such as this took place in an American court in 2022. This behavior from the legal system is not shocking, but rather highly disappointing.
As I drove back from Memphis to Peoria, I reflected on the volatile relationship between many African Americans and the poor regarding the legal system in this country. A system where some individuals can ignore subpoenas and others die due to forced home entries approved by no-knock warrants. In the case of Tom Robinson, art imitates life in a fictional novel, and life imitates art in the case of Anthony Ray Hinton. A jury wrongly convicted both. But what does one do when the evidence is ignored or not presented effectively by the state-appointed defense? Is faith enough to sustain a person absent justice? Can we continue to rely on our peers for justice?
We can only hope. However, history is not on our side. Atticus Finch believed that “The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” Each of us has a moral compass that ultimately guides us to do the right thing. Unfortunately, our moral compass often points toward self interest, biases, and fear. Or maybe, as Atticus Finch suggested, “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view … until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
To take that walk requires courage, despite the consequences or how you are perceived — one final quote from Atticus Finch sums up the magnitude of this endeavor as he tries to defend an innocent man: “I wanted you to see what real courage is instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway, and you see it through no matter what.
“You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”
To have the courage and conviction of our conscience is our charge — to be led by the courage to do the right thing, not by fear of consequences. While realizing that the fight will save some, and if one can be saved, so can the many.