“Justice should be one of the things that’s colorblind.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I want people to realize that we can teach hate, but we also can teach love.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“On September 22, 2002, my mama, Buhlar Hinton, died. When the guards told me, I gave up. She’d been deteriorating for a long time – I believe she died of a broken heart.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I have no respect for the prosecutors, the judges. And I say that not with malice in my heart. I say it because they took 30 years from me.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“My mom was my mother and father. My father lost his mind when I was about 4 years old. And my mom did everything she could to make sure that we was brought up right.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“Bitterness kills the soul.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“It took me a little while to remember how to use a fork. You know, we don’t use forks in the penitentiary. You get a spoon.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I was put on death row because of hate.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“What do you say to a person who is going to their death? Normally, we would just say, ‘Hang in there, keep your hope up,’ because there is hope until the very last second.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I have too much to live for to allow a bunch of cowards to take my joy. I refuse to give them my joy.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I’m just trying to be a little tiny light in God’s world.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I am a joyful person.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“Being able to control your mind is a beautiful thing.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“My only crime was being born black – or being born black in Alabama.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“It’s hard to explain exactly what it feels like to be judged. There’s a shame to it. Even when you know you’re innocent. It still feels like you are coated in something dirty and evil.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“When it seems like the whole world thinks you’re bad, it’s hard to hang on to your goodness.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“Black, poor, without a father most of my life, one of 10 children – it was actually pretty amazing I had made it to the age of 29 without a noose around my neck.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I loved to read books in the free world, and there was a lot of time to sit around and do nothing in prison. When you read, it opens up your mind; it helped us take our minds away from where we were.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I was born with a mother who loved me unconditionally and with a sense of humor.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I hope that America will do away with the death penalty. I truly believe we are better than that.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“Believe me, when you’re sitting on death row, you want the appeal process to take time; as long as you’re going through it, you’re going to be alive.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“The State of Alabama let me down tremendously.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I witnessed other inmates’ time run out, and I’d be lying if I said you don’t ask yourself, ‘Wow, is that going to happen to me?’”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“When the very people that you been taught to believe in – the police, the D.A., these are the people that are supposed to stand for justice – and when you know that they lied to you, it’s hard for you to have trust in anybody.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“Everybody that played a part in sending me to death row, you will answer to God.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I want you to know there is a God. He sits high, but he looks low. He will destroy, but yet he will defend – and he defended me.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I shouldn’t have sat on death row 30 years. All they had to do was test the gun. But when you think you are high and mighty and you’re above the law, you don’t have to answer to nobody, but I’ve got news for you.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“You never think of your freedom until it’s taken away from you, and once it’s taken… So, it means everything to me. You couldn’t put a price tag on it.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“They took my 30s, my 40s, my 50s, but what they couldn’t take was my joy. I couldn’t do nothing about the years, but I could control my joy… I kept a smile on my face; I kept love in my heart.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I forgive because not to forgive would only hurt me.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“Spending your days waiting to die is no way to live.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“For 30 years, I lived in pure hell.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“Death Row is the same every day – breakfast at 3 A.M., lunch at 10 A.M., dinner at 3 P.M.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“The state of Alabama can take my freedom, the state of Alabama can take my future, but the state of Alabama cannot take my joy.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I went to Paris, I went to France, I went to England, I went to Ireland. In my mind, I can go wherever I wanted to go. I left death row every day.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“When you’re poor and black in America, you stand a greater chance of going to prison for something you didn’t do.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I spent 30 years on Alabama’s death row for a crime I did not commit.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“Death row prisoners face enormous challenges in finding lawyers who will assist them.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“For 14 years, I could not find volunteer lawyers capable of providing the legal assistance I needed to prove my innocence.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“What kind of system do we have when innocent people can sit on death row for 30 years?”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I’m really trying to bring an end to the death penalty because it means so much to me.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I never used a gun in my life.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I don’t believe that man was built to be put in a 5-by-7 for 30 years and have his sanity when he comes out if he doesn’t find something to escape.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“Being in a five-by-seven every day for 365 days a year is more than what the average man could stand. You weren’t built to be in a cage that long.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I just didn’t believe the God that I served would allow me to die for something I didn’t do.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“Being on death row has taken so much from me as a human being.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“You get to know everyone on death row. You become friends with them and their families. I met some great guys. Everyone regrets what they did.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“In the South, people in power feel they don’t have to answer to no one.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“When you have a death row case, you have to make 100 percent sure you have the right person. But these DAs in the state of Alabama are racist.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“My mother passed in 2002. That was a blow like no other blow.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I’ve often thought books give you – put you in a world that you never thought you could go. And I often would say, I don’t need to go to California. Give me a book that talks about California. And I can put it in my head and imagine what it looked like.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I often say that if I had one wish in this world, I would wish that every child could have a mother the way my mother were. And I never went without clothes, I never went without food… I never went without anything that a child needs. But above all of that, she gave me unconditional love.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“There was a time I thought I’d never see the sun again.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I cannot hate, because my Bible teaches me not to hate.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I’ve seen hate at its worse. What would it profit me to hate?”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“To me, America need to clean up their own home before they tell another country about human rights. I’m a primary example. America don’t care nothing about human rights.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I have a good sense of humour, and that’s what kept me for the 30 years I was locked up.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“When every court was saying ‘no,’ I believe God was still saying yes. I had to somehow find that faith and reach deep down in my soul and believe in the teaching that my mother taught me as a young boy, that God can do everything but fail.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“When I went to prison, for three years I didn’t say a word to another human being until, going into the fourth year, when I realized, ‘You know what, I have to find a way to live.’”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“I believe in laughter. I believe laughter is good for the soul. I believe in making other people laugh to make them feel good.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“The last time I saw my mom was in 1997. My mom started getting sick, and my mom finally passed away in 2002. My mom was my world. My mom was everything to me. We didn’t have money. We didn’t have a whole lot of materialistic things, but one thing I can truly say, that my mother loved me and all of her children unconditionally.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“To stay sane, I lived in my head, where I could travel and imagine. In my mind, I played a championship game with the Knicks. I won Wimbledon five times. If the Yankees needed a home run, I came to bat.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“Death row was the only place where I never witnessed racism. We all went to bed with a death sentence on our heads and woke up that way. We had to become each other’s support system.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“The men on death row had been told the world would be better without them. I tried to say that this may not be where we want to be, but let’s do what we can for one another.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“Henry Hays was cheated all his life. He was cheated by his father who taught him to hate. His community taught him to hate. My mom told me, no matter what one does in life, he or she deserves some compassion, and I knew Hays deserved compassion more than anybody.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“Hatred is nothing but a form of cancer, and it will eat you up.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“A white man of authority don’t ever want to admit to someone of colour they was wrong.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
“America should be ashamed to say they have the best justice system in the world when, every day, race plays a part in who goes to prison, who don’t go to prison.”
― Anthony Ray Hinton
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