Discrimination and the Criminal Justice System Theme Analysis

The Sun Does Shine, Anthony Ray Hinton’s memoir, covers his 30 years in prison—28 of which were on Alabama’s death row—for crimes he did not commit, before he was finally released from prison. One of Ray’s primary aims in the book is to expose discrimination within America’s criminal justice system: many of the people who are instrumental in Ray’s arrest and trial are openly biased against him because he is Black, and his poverty also severely limits his ability to hire a good lawyer who can prove his innocence. While the criminal justice system claims to provide “equal and exact justice to all men of whatever state or persuasion”—words etched into the Jefferson County courthouse—Ray illustrates how the criminal justice system actually discriminates heavily against those who are not wealthy or white.

Because Ray is Black, the predominately white Jefferson County police force and court system are biased against him from the moment of his arrest. In 1985, Alabama policemen arrest Ray for three linked robbery-murders at separate restaurants. When he tells the police that he didn’t commit the crime, the Lieutenant says, “You know, I don’t care whether you did or didn’t do it. In fact, I believe you didn’t do it. But it doesn’t matter. If you didn’t do it, one of your brothers did. And you’re going to take the rap.” This horrific explanation illustrates clearly that the Lieutenant doesn’t care about getting the right culprit. He simply cares about making sure that Ray or any one of his “brothers” (by this, the Lieutenant means any Black man) pays for the crime. The Lieutenant also lays out the reasons why Ray will be found guilty in his trial: because he’s Black; because a white man is going to say that Ray shot him; and because he’ll have a white district attorney, judge, and jury. With this, the Lieutenant explicitly points out how bias within the criminal justice system is going to work against Ray—due to his race, Ray has no hope of being acquitted despite the fact that he did not commit the crime.

Ray’s prosecutor and defense attorney are then able to manipulate the trial based on their racial biases, ultimately sentencing him to death row. Throughout the trial, Ray notes that the prosecutor, Bob McGregor, looks at him with “hatred,” suggesting that McGregor hates Ray and assumes that he’s guilty based solely on his outward appearance—that is, his race. McGregor then agrees to let Ray take a polygraph test that either side could use in the trial—but when the polygraph results show that Ray is telling the truth about being innocent, McGregor refuses to allow the polygraph to be used as evidence. In this way, the prosecutor’s discrimination against Ray leads him to manipulate the evidence allowed in the trial. Even Ray’s own lawyer, Sheldon Perhacs, proves his own bias. Ray tries to argue his own case to Perhacs, explaining that he clocked into a night shift at his work at the time of the third robbery and that his mom’s gun—which police believe is the murder weapon—hasn’t been fired for years. But Perhacs simply asserts, “Listen, all y’all always doing something and saying you’re innocent” (“all y’all” is implied to mean Black people). Perhacs then puts in virtually no effort to mount a defense, and Ray later discovers that he and McGregor are good friends. Thus, Perhacs’s bias against Black people and personal relationship with McGregor also lead to a miscarriage of justice, because Ray doesn’t get the adequate defense that U.S. law guarantees every person.

Racism isn’t the only type of systemic discrimination in the justice system—Ray also faces obstacles because he is poor. The state pays Perhacs $1,000 to represent Ray because Ray cannot afford a lawyer, and Perhacs informs Ray disgruntledly that he “eat[s] $1000 for breakfast.” Perhacs tells Ray that an adequate defense would cost $15,000, whereas Ray barely had $350 to take the polygraph test. This exposes the inequity in the system, whereby wealthy people are able to afford better lawyers (and/or more of their lawyer’s time) to mount a defense. Furthermore, the state gives Perhacs a mere $500 to pay a ballistics expert to analyze firearm evidence from the robbery-murders; the only person they are able to get at that rate is a man named Andrew Payne, who has one eye and isn’t able to use the machinery that matches the bullets with the gun. The prosecution quickly dismantles Payne’s testimony, and because the ballistics evidence is the main link between Ray and the crimes, the jury finds him guilty. Again, Ray’s poverty means that he cannot get proper justice. Ray also underscores how discrimination exists broadly even outside the criminal justice system, indicating that the system is also emblematic of societal issues more broadly. He describes experiencing racism in his school and on his baseball team, while he experiences classism in his work at the coal mine. Ray thinks at his trial, “Black, poor, without a father most of my life, one of ten children—it was actually pretty amazing I had made it to the age of twenty-nine without a noose around my neck.” This description of a “noose around [his] neck” recalls the racist lynching of poor Black people in the American South in the 19th and early 20th centuries, suggesting that the racism and classism that Ray faces could easily kill him even outside of the criminal justice system.

In an article for the Birmingham News, Bryan Stevenson—the man who becomes Ray’s lawyer while he is on death row—writes, “Alabama’s death penalty is a lie. It is a perverse monument to inequality, to how some lives matter and others do not. It is a violent example of how we protect and value the rich and abandon and devalue the poor.” Stevenson acknowledges that the problem of discrimination in the justice system and beyond isn’t isolated to a single case—Ray’s story is one of many poignant and personal examples of how easily injustice can be carried against racial minorities and poor people.