Reading Room

SPECIAL BOOK CLUB EDITION

DELIVERANCE

For nearly 30 years, Ray Hinton’s home was death row, where he desperately hoped the courts would finally acknowledge his innocence. Now he’s free, and his memoir, The Sun Does Shine, is the new Oprah’s Book Club pick.

I WAS IN ALABAMA interviewing social-justice warrior Bryan Stevenson and noticed a book on his desk. As I was leaving, he gave it to me. And for the next two days I was glued to Ray Hinton’s soul-searing memoir. It will stay with me forever. As Stevenson— who personally took up Hinton’s case 12 years into his sentence and finally got him released from prison after he’dserved 28 years for two murders he didn’t commit—puts it, the tale is “a textbook example of injustice.” I was honored, a few weeks after I finished reading, to sit down with Ray and find out more about what he went through and how, remarkably, he kept the faith.

OPRAH: Ray, I’ve been listening to people’s stories for a long time, but yours is about the most incredible. You spent almost three decades in prison for crimes you were not guilty of. Take us back to your arrest, when you were 29. 

RAY HINTON: I was cutting the grass in the back of the house where I lived with my mother, in Burnwell, Alabama. After a few minutes, I looked up and there were two white gentlemen standing there. One asked, “Are you Anthony Ray Hinton?” I said I was. They said they were detectives and had a warrant for my arrest. When I asked what for, they wouldn’t say. They handcuffed me and put me into the squad car. 

OW: Your mom was still inside?