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

After philosophizing about destiny and how the past shapes the future, Ray Hinton narrates a visit at the Jefferson County Jail in 1986. His mother is there, along with Hinton’s best friend, Lester Bailey. Hinton, interweaving the details of this visit with the particulars of his case, laments the horrors and hardships these two have faced while believing in him. He claims he would do, in trying to be freed, what his mother had always told him to do: “I would still pray for a miracle and not try to criticize it if the miracle didn’t look like what I expected” (5).

Hinton flashes forward five days to his court appearance, where he has the opportunity to testify on his own behalf. He makes it clear to the reader that, while he despises the judge and the prosecutor, his wishes them no harm.

Hinton's lawyer at the time—a public defendant overburdened with many cases—speaks to the judge first; this suggests that Hinton’s testimony, if allowed, couldn’t hurt anything. Hinton’s handcuffs are removed, and he stands to address the court. While maintaining his innocence, he also insists he has forgiven everyone involved in his wrongful arrest. A bailiff, Hinton notes, previously testified that Hinton confessed to knowing how to cheat on a polygraph; in his speech, Hinton forgives this man as well. He also tells those in the court that he has been praying for them. After insisting that he was arrested simply for being a black man in the South, he concludes his testimony: “I’m not worried about that death chair. You can sentence me to it, but you can’t take my life. It don’t belong to you. My soul, you can’t touch it” (13). 

After a three-hour recess, Hinton receives a death sentence; however, he doesn’t give up. In fact, because he has been sentenced to death, rather than life in prison, he is legally guaranteed an appeal and representation.

In a flashback, Hinton returns to his adolescence, narrating his high school athletic career as a burgeoning baseball prospect. Playing in front of “a sea of white faces” (16), he learns not to question the dubious third strike call from the white, home-plate umpire. Hinton and his teammates, in the desegregation era, had been bussed to face off against a primarily white school, in a white community. He notes the irony: “Because both Lester and I were big guys, no one ever called us names to our faces. [The white opponents] were afraid of us, which was funny, because both Lester and I had been raised to be afraid of them” (16).

Hinton discusses his hometown of Praco, Alabama. Nearly every resident there worked for the coal mining industry. The company owned their homes and operated the shops where employees—all black—went to purchase provisions. Nonetheless, despite the impoverished conditions of black Praco, Hinton maintains that his family, and the families of others in his community, felt happy and safe. “And then,” Hinton offers in ironic counterpoint, “they integrated the schools” (19).     

This episode underscores a major turning point Hinton's life. He would, as a high school senior, be subjected to verbal abuse: “Not a day went by that I didn’t hear someone yelling ‘Nigger!’ in my direction” (19). He follows those incidents by demonstrating his reliance on his sporting prowess as a means of empowerment. Denied the financial support given to some young athletes, Hinton relates that he would, as a child, learn to play baseball using broom handles and taped up chunks of cardboard. In this particular game, Hinton hits a homerun. Upon rounding the bases, Hinton “slowed down. I don’t think there’s ever a reason to hurry when you got a bunch of white people cheering you on” (22).

Walking home that night with best friend Lester, the two have to jump into a ditch in order to avoid a car trying to hit them; they wonder if it was a coincidence. Lester says, “It’s strange what you can get used to.” Hinton, commenting on the sensation of being on his back, and looking up at the sky, replies, “There’s some things a body shouldn’t have to get used to” (24).

This chapter begins in 1975 by recounting Hinton’s career in the coal mines—in particular, the Mary Lee Mine No. 2. Upon discussing he suffered from an accident, he describes the details of the job. He was, for example, responsible for taking care of roofing structures: “It wasn’t easy to maneuver the machinery and the bolts […] but it had to be done and done right or men would die” (27). After recounting other imagined possibilities for his life, he explains that in the mines, he suffered a concussion and a lacerated nose because of falling rock.

He confesses, too, to his own faults. At one point he was dating two women—they were sisters. “I wasn’t proud of dating two sisters,” he explains, “but women were my one weakness” (30). He adds further self-indemnifying testimony, saying that where women were concerned, he never worried whether they were married, or were involved with another man. “On more than one occasion,” he explains, “I left a woman’s house right when her boyfriend or husband was coming home” (30). On Sundays he attended church and sought forgiveness. The rest of the week, he was back out looking for illicit sexual encounters.      

Eventually his family had to move from Praco; because of this, Hinton needed a car. Without one, he wouldn’t be able to get a job; without a job, he couldn’t buy a car. Having quit his job at the mines, Hinton steals a car from a lot, and regularly drives it for two years, helping his mother to run errands, and enjoying freedom and ownership. Finally, the police caught up with him; he confessed his crime to his mother, and wound up on parole. “I would be on parole for a year and a half or so, until August 1985,” Hinton writes, “I knew I would never, ever do anything that was outside the law” (35).