SIA: Alright.
SIA: And so I just want to take a moment to
acknowledge how connected the work we're
doing at these two new spaces is to our
clients and that's why I'm so thrilled
to have this time today to talk about
the criminal justice system and to talk
to three amazing advocates for a better
future.
I'll introduce them quickly. Piper Kerman
is an incredible incredible advocate. [applause]
Her best-selling and award-winning memoir
"Orange is the New Black" became a Netflix
TV series and introduced issues of
criminal justice to a brand new audience
and continues to shape the discussion.
She's also a tireless advocate for
prison reform, for criminal justice
reform, for re-entry, for issues affecting
women in prison, and we're so thrilled to
have her with us today. She's a longtime
friend of EJI and has received our
Champion of Justice award.
Our next panelist that I will introduce briefly
is a legend in criminal defense. He has
argued and won four cases before the US
Supreme Court. He's one of the most
recognized capital and trial defense
attorneys in America. He founded the
Southern Center for Human Rights in 1982. He's taught at Yale Law School since
1993. He is the person who convinced me
to stay in law school and choose the
career that I've chosen, so he holds a
special place in my heart. He's a long,
long friend of EJI, the incredible,
incomparable Stephen Bright is here today. [applause]
And finally, when I first arrived at EJI
10 years ago, one of the first cases I
worked on was that of a man named
Anthony Ray Hinton who at that time had
been incarcerated on death row in
Alabama for over 20 years, despite being
innocent of the two murders for which
he'd been convicted.
EJI spent 16 years, led by Bryan
Stevenson, fighting for his release. He
was finally released in 2015 after the
United States Supreme Court, in a
unanimous 9-0 opinion, recognized that
his lawyer was constitutionally
ineffective and set the stage for a new
trial. Since he has been released, after
spending 30 years on Alabama's death row
for crimes he did not commit, Mr. Hinton
has become one of the most profound
voices for reform in the system and for
the end of the death penalty.
There is simply nobody else like him and
we are so thrilled to have him here
today, so please welcome to the stage
Anthony Ray Hinton, Piper Kerman and
Steve Bright. Thank you! [applause]
PIPER: Hello, hello, hello. Everybody hear me? Thank you for that warm Montgomery,
Alabama welcome, we appreciate it.
If Jelani Cobb was the luckiest man in
town yesterday, to be up here with
Michelle Alexander and Sherrilyn Ifill,
then I am the luckiest lady in town
today, because I am up here with two very
wonderful men, right? So professor Steve
Bright has tried capital cases before
juries in Alabama, Georgia, and
Mississippi and he has argued and won
for capital cases before the United
States Supreme Court.
Steve led the Southern Center for Human
Rights for 35 years and he is now
Professor of Practice at the Georgia
State College of Law and he also teaches
at the law schools at Yale and
Georgetown, how do you find the time? [laughter]
Steve received the American BAR
Association's Thurgood Marshall Award
along with many, many other recognitions
of his work. I'm glad you're here, Steve.
And Anthony Ray Hinton is the author of
"The Sun Does Shine,"
[applause]
Subtitled, "How I Found Life and Freedom
on Death Row." He was falsely convicted of
murder in Birmingham, Alabama, sentenced to death, and spent 28 years on death row
despite his innocence. In April 2015,
Bryan Stevenson and EJI helped Anthony
to win his freedom. And it took 16 years
because the state of Alabama did
everything in their power to keep him on
death row. So Ray, your story is riveting
and your book is wonderful. If you
haven't read the book, yeah... [applause]
The book was just published last month.
You need to run out and get a copy, and
I'll tell you something chapters 13, 14,
and 15 are instructive of how we all can
live our lives, I think. 
The other thing that I think is so
important and illuminating about your
story and about the book as
a as a vehicle for that story is that it
is such a clear example of what Bryan
talks about when he points out the fact
that our criminal justice system will
treat a person who is guilty and wealthy
far better than a person who is innocent
but is poor, right. And Ray, I just hoped
that perhaps you'd tell us a little
bit more about that journey and that
story so that everyone can know.
RAY: Absolutely, let me stand up. First, I am here today
because of some people - I call them my
family, I call them justice seekers. At
this moment, I would like for all of my
EJI family to stand up.
[applause]
I can't say enough about... I wouldn't be
here if it wasn't for them. But thirty
years ago, the state of Alabama came
to my mother's home.
I was in the backyard cutting grass,
didn't want to be cutting grass, and I
ran into a lot of you, and in Alabama in
July, it is beyond hot. But my mother
asked me, "Are you going to revival
tonight?" And I said, "Yes ma'am," and she
said, "Well, what time does revival start?"
And I said "Seven o'clock mama." She said
"Well you got time to go out there and
cut that grass," [laughter] and I gave my mother this
baby look, but today for whatever reason
it wasn't working. I looked at my mother
and I said, "Mama, I promise you, I will cut
that grass tomorrow." My mother looked at
me and she said, "I'm trying my best to
see how did you get, you'll cut the
grass tomorrow, out of me telling you to
go cut the grass." And with that, she gave
me this look that only I knew what it
meant, and she finally said, "Boy get out there
and cut that grass." And I goes outside,
and I began to cut the grass, and about
20 to 25 minutes into cutting the grass,
I just happened to look up, and there
stood two white gentleman. I cut the
lawnmower off and I said "Can I help you?"
They said, "Yes, we're looking for
Anthony Ray Hinton." I said "That
would be me, again, how can I help you?" They identified themselves as two detectives
from the Birmingham Police Department. I
said again, "How can I help you?"
They said, "We have a warrant for your
arrest," I said, "For what?" They said, "We
will explain that to you later, but right
now, we want you to put your hands behind
your back." I complied, I put my hand
behind my back. They put the handcuffs on
me and proceeded to put me in the squad
car and I said, "Hold up."
"At least allow me the opportunity to go
in and tell my mother that I'm being
arrested for something." One of the
detectives said, "We can't let you go
back inside," and we argued for about two
minutes, and finally the other detective
said, "Let him go in and tell his mother
that he's being arrested." I goes in and I
don't say a word to my mother, I just
show her the handcuffs, and like any good
mother, she began to scream and holler,
"What are those handcuffs doing on my
baby?" The detective said, "Take him outside while I stand here and talk to his
mother." A few minutes later, the detective
come out and we proceeded to go to the
county jail. The detective turned around and said,
"Anthony, do you own a firearm?" I said,
"No, I do not."
He said, "Do your mother own a firearm?" And I said yes and I told him what kind it was.
And everyday in this state of Alabama
somebody come up to me and say, "Why did
you tell the police about a gun that
they had no knowledge of?" And I said, "All
my life, my mother told me, "If you
haven't done anything, why are you lying?"
"If you haven't done anything, why are you
running? Always just tell the truth."
And that day, I told the truth. They dropped
me off at the substation, turned around and
went back to my mother's house and somehow talked to her and she gave them the
pistol. They came back and they picked me
up, and once again we proceeded to go to the
county jail. The detective wouldn't say a
word and I asked him at least 50 times,
"Detective, why am I being arrested?"
Never would respond. And after we drove a
little farther, for the 51st time, I said,
"Detective, if you don't mind, tell me why
are y'all arresting me?" And he finally
turned around and he looked at me and he
said, "You want to know why we arrested
you?"
And I said, "Yes." He said, "We're going to charge you with first-degree robbery,
first-degree kidnapping, first-degree
attempted murder." I said, "I haven't done any
of that. You got the wrong person."
He said,
"Let me tell you something right now. I
don't care whether you did it or didn't
do it, but I'm gonna make sure you're
found guilty of it." I said, "For a crime
that I didn't commit?" He said, "You must
have a hearing problem. Didn't I just tell
you I don't care whether you did it or
didn't do it?" And as we drove a little
farther, they turned around and looked at me and he said, "And by the way, there's five
things they're going to convict you, would
you like to know what they are?" And I
said yes. He said, "Number one, you're black. Number two, a white man is gonna say you
shot him - whether you shot him or not," he
said, "Believe me if you believe nothing
else, I don't care."
He said, "Number three, you're gonna have a
white prosecutor. Number four, you're
gonna have a white judge, and number five,
you're gonna have an all-white jury." He
said, "Do you know what that spells?" And he
repeated the word conviction, conviction,
conviction, conviction, conviction and as
we got to the county jail, they put me in
this holding cell for about two and a
half hours, and finally he came back and
I said, "Detective, if you don't mind, tell
me the date and the time this crime took
place?" He goes through his notes and he
looks and he tells me the date and the
time, and I said, "Thank God," I said
"Detective, I was at work that particular day
and that particular time," and I said,
"Thank you, Jesus." My supervisor happened to be white.
I gave him my supervisor's address and I
gave him his phone number. I said, "You can
go out there and check." And about four and
a half hours later, he comes back. He said,
"I have good news and bad news. The good
news is we're no longer gonna charge you
with first-degree robbery, first-degree kidnap, first-degree attempted murder."
"He said, "Your alibi checks out," he said. "But now the bad news. We have decided that
we're going to charge you now with two
counts of first-degree capital murder."
I said, "But I haven't killed anyone,"
he said, "You really need to
get that hearing problem fixed, because
on the way here, I told you, I don't care
whether you did it or didn't do it," he said, "It's still the same here."
"I don't care." And as I was talking to the
detective, somehow I was able to make him
see me as an individual. And he looked at me and he said, "And by the way, I truly believe that
you didn't do it," he said, "But y'all,"
referring to all black, he said, "Y'all is
always taking up for one another. Take
this rep for your homeboy." With tears
coming down my cheeks I said,  "Detective, I don't have enough, I don't have a homeboy
in this world that I would take a rap
like this for." I sit in jail, I goes
before a judge and the judge asks
me, do I understand the charges that
I'm being charged with, and I tell him, yes.
He asked me, do I have an attorney, and I
tell him no. He said the State of Alabama
will appoint you one. He looks back in
his courtroom and he calls this lawyer
upfront. Without even asking me my name,
the lawyer looked at me and he said, "I
didn't go to law school to do pro bono
work." I looked at the lawyer and I said,
"Would it make a difference to you if I
told you that I was innocent?" The lawyer
looked at me and he said, "The problem
with that statement -
all of y'all is always doing something
and then saying you didn't do it." This is
the lawyer that I had to believe that
will represent me. I sit in jail for a
year and a half. They tried me, convicted me.
The judge for whatever reason stood up that day, said, "Anthony Ray Hinton, you have
been found guilty of two counts of first-degree capital murder. It is the order of
this court that I sentence you to die." And
that judge had the audacity
to say, "May God have mercy on your soul."
The prosecution ran out that day and
told the media that the State of Alabama
got the worst killer off the street that
day. But only it wasn't true. And on
December 16th, 1986, I was transported
to Holman Correctional Facility where
they housed death row inmates. And for the next
three years, I didn't say a word to another human
being. I went into this dark place and I
realize today that this dark place that
I was able to go in is what really
saved in my life. But earlier going into
the fourth year, I woke up to the sound
of a grown man crying, a man that I lived
by for three years, never asked him
his name or where he was from, but approximately
about 1am in the morning, I
heard this man crying. My mother have
always taught me compassion, my mother
said, "No matter what one does in life,
he or she still deserve compassion." And
it was that compassion that came out of
me that made me holler through this
brick wall and I said, "Hey, is something
wrong over there?" It took this gentleman
a while to respond, but finally he said,
"I just got word my mother passed." I told
him that I was sorry to hear this and I
told him that if anybody was going to
argue his case, it would be his mother,
and she would argue his case before God, and I told him a little corny jokes. I often
tell people I was born with two things,
if nothing else in this world,
I was born to a mother who loved me, and
I was born with a sense of humor. You
know, there's some beautiful ladies here but I don't care how beautiful you are, whether
you're old, young, I'm the type of old
country boy that if I see you walking and
you just happened to fall, I would be
the first one to run to you and help you up
and I'm gonna be the first one to ask you,
"Are you okay?"
But the moment you tell me you're fine, I'm
gonna laugh at you for falling. I have
always believed that laughter is good
for the soul.
And so that day, me and this man, I told
him a corny joke and we laughed and I
laid back down and about 6 o'clock that
morning I woke up and I realized that my
voice was back and my sense of humor was
back and the state of Alabama was in the
process of executing four men, they were
fixing to kill the third man, and I called
this guard up to my cell and I said,
"Officer, is there anything you can give
me where I won't have to smell the human
flesh burning?" The guard looked at me and
he said, "No, there's nothing I can give
you, but if there's a consolation into it,"
he said, "You'll get used to it." But then
he said something profound, he said, "And by
the way, one day, somebody will smell your
flesh burning," and as he said that he
walked away. I sit on this bunk that
really was too small for me and I told
my mind that I had to leave.
I had to somehow escape in order to
survive this place. I looked at my body
and I told my body that the mind had to
leave and it was as though my body
looked up at me and said, "Do you promise
to come back?" And I said, "Yes, I said got
to come back and check on this case
anyway." And as soon as my body gave me
for permission to leave, I left. And
of all the places in the world to go,
I wanted to go see Queen Elizabeth.
In my mind, I shows up at the palace,
I tell the guard to tell the Queen that
I was there to see her. I goes in and the
Queen and I have this conversation about
Prince Charles, Prince William, Prince Harry and
of course the tragedy of Lady Princess Di.
And finally the Queen realized that she
hadn't offered me anything to
drink and she looks at me and she said,
"Mr. Hinton, would you like some tea?"
And I told the Queen I would love some
tea and she said, "What what you're
like in your tea?" And I told her, "A
spot of lemon." She tells the butler to go
out and bring me this lemon and I
squeezed it, put it in my tea, we drank we
talked and I finally stand up and tell
the Queen that I must be leaving.
I leave, and now I realized that I can
leave prison in my mind and whenever I
wanted to, and there wasn't nothing nobody could
do about it. I did something that I said
as young boy that I would never do.
I said, at the age of 12, that I would
never get married. But then I decided
that I would marry the beautiful and
talented actress Halle Berry.
Halle Berry and I stayed married for 15 long years up here in this mind.
Halle Berry was what I call - if there's a
thing, I've never been married - Halle Berry
was called the perfect wife. She never
did complain, she never did do anything
but say, "Yes, dear," and "Okay, dear," and what
I loved about Halle more than anything,
she didn't spend any money. And then
going into the sixteenth year, the prison
did something for death row inmate that
they never do.
The prison decided that they would show
us a movie, and the movie was "Speed."
For the first time in my life, I see Sandra
Bullock. In my mind, I imagine Halle looking at
Sandra Bullock and enjoying the
movie as I'm enjoying the movie, now I'm
thinking, I'm watching this woman drive
this bus. I looks at Halle and I look at
Sandra Bullock, I look at Sandra Bullock
and I look at Halle, I'm trying to build my
nerves up to tell Halle some bad news. [laughter]
In my mind, I'm trying to get the nerves
up to tell Halle that I'm going to
divorce her and I'm going to marry Sandra
Bullock. In my mind, I'm thinking if a
woman can drive a bus this good, imagine
what she could do with a good getaway
car. And then the guard was there calling
me, the guard said, "Anthony, I've been calling you
for ten minutes," I said, "I've been
gone, what is it?" He said, "You have a legal
visit." I said, "But I don't have an
attorney." He said, "Anthony, somebody's
out there pretending to be a lawyer, get
up and go see who it is." I get dressed, I
go out there's this lawyer from
Boston. The lawyer introduced himself.
I said, "Who sent you from Boston?" He tells
me a man by the name of Bryan Stevenson
of EJI. I say, "Who is Bryan Stevenson and
who is EJI?"
[applause]
He tells me about the work that they do at EJI,
and how good - but he used the word great -
how great Bryan Stevenson was, and I
listened at him and I said, "You've been
telling me about this Bryan Stevenson
and how great he is," I said, "But he can't
be that great because Bryan Stevenson
have already made one fundamental
mistake." And he looked at me and he
said, "What is that mistake?" I said, "Had Bryan
Stevenson got in touch with me before he
sent you here, Bryan Stevenson would have
known that I am a beloved Yankee
fan, and there's no way a Yankee fan
and a Boston fan could ever work together,"
I said, "But for your sake, I'm willing to
put my personal feelings aside and let
you work on my case." And then for three
years, this lawyer worked on my case and
he would come back and tell me what he
was trying to do. And then in the fourth
year, he came back, he said, "Anthony, I
think I can get you a life without
parole."
I said, "Get who a life without parole?" He
said, "You." I said, "Life without parole is
for guilty people, not innocent people," I
said, "I would prefer to die than to stand
up and say I did something when I didn't
do it." I said, "I don't know whether you'll be
able to understand what I'm about to
tell you," I said, "But I was 12 years old
and my mother called me in the room and
she said, 'I want to tell you something,'
she said, 'If you man enough to bend down
and pick up a rock and if you man enough
to throw that rock you, should be man
enough to say you throwed that rock,'" I said,
"This is one rock I didn't throw.
Therefore I could never say I did this
when I didn't." I said, "If the state of
Alabama is hell-bent on executing me for
something that they knew that I didn't
do, so be it." I said, "All of us had to die at
some point at some time. I'm not ready to
die, and I definitely don't want to die
for something that I didn't do, but if
that's the way it be, so be it."
I looked at this lawyer
and I say, "I need a lawyer that believes in
me, I need a lawyer that is willing to go
to jail for me, if necessary. The fact
that you trying to get me a life without
parole tells me you don't believe in me.
And today I have no choice but to fire
you." The lawyer said, "Are you serious?" I said, "Yes."
And as he going out the front door and
I'm going in the back, something in my
mind said, "You've got to be the dumbest
person in the world. You just fired the
only lawyer that you had." And just as
that thought came to my mind, another
thought came and said, "Always stand up
for what you believe in. Always stand up
for principle." [applause] And as I get back to my cell, the
guard is watching TV. And I stop and
I asked him, "What are you watching?" And he tells
me, "This attorney out of Montgomery,
a lawyer by the name of Bryan Stevenson." I
said, "You mind if I stand here and
listen in for a moment?" He said sure. I
listen to Bryan Stevenson and he was
talking about why we don't need a death
penalty in this country. For whatever
reason, I can't tell you the exact reason,
but I knew at that moment, this is the
man that I needed to represent me. That
night, I wrote Mr. Stevenson a letter thanking
him for the lawyer from Boston.
I told Mr. Stevenson that I would like for
him to consider becoming my lawyer.
I said, "But before you say yes or no, all
I ask is that you read my
transcript," I said, "And if you find one thing
in my transcript that points to my guilt,
do not worry about becoming my lawyer. Do not send me another lawyer. I am prepared
to die for something that I know and God
knows that I didn't do." I get a reply from
Mr. Stevenson about three months later.
He tells me he will read my
transcript. Five months later, I get a
letter saying he would be coming down to
see me. I cannot explain it, but the
moment I shook this man's hand, I knew God
had sent me his best lawyer. [applause] We sit there,
We sit there and we talked about our
childhoods, and finally I looked at
Mr. Stevenson and I said, "Mr. Stevenson, the state of Alabama is saying the gun
they got from my mother's house is the
murder weapon." I said, "Mr. Stevenson,
there's no two guns alike. I already know
that the state of Alabama is lying."
I said, "Mr. Stevenson I need you to do me
a favor."
Mr. Stevenson looked at me and he said, "What is the favor?" I said, "I need you to
hire a qualified ballistics expert." I said,
"My case revolved around ballistics,
and ballistics only." Mr. Stevenson looked
at me, and in a nice manner way, the way
he talks, he said "Well, I was gonna do
that anyway." And I looked at
Mr. Stevenson and I said, "Mr. Stevenson, I'm not explaining myself right."
"Mr. Stevenson, I need you to hire a white
man. I need this white man to be from
the South. I need this white man to believe in the
death penalty. I need this white man to be the best of
the best. But above all that, I need this
white man to tell the truth."
Mr. Stevenson looked at me and he said, "I
will try my best,"
he said, "But I need to ask you something.
Why do he have to be white?"
I said, "Mr. Stevenson, I lived in the South all of my life, and one thing I know about the
South - they only recognize one of their
own." I said, "Mr. Stevenson, you can go out
and get the best white female in the
country, her word is no good upon that
witness stand in the South. And Mr.
Stevenson, you know it cannot be a person
of color." He left. About three months
later, the guard tells me to call the
Mr. Stevenson. I called Mr. Stevenson. He tells me that he found three
of the world's renowned experts. He said,
"Two of them live in Texas and one of
them lives in Virginia." I said, "They don't
get no Southerner than Texas in Virginia."
He said, "But Ray, I need to tell you
something. These three experts are the
best, they are better than good." He said,
"But I need to inform you that they have
never testified for the defense. Ray, they
testify all the time for the prosecution."
He said, "Are you sure these are the men that you want me to hire?" He said, "In other words,
98% of their testimony have been for the
prosecution."
I said, "Mr. Stevenson, did you remember to
ask them, would they just tell the truth?"
He said, "Yes, they all said they would
tell exactly what the evidence says."
I said, "Mr. Stevenson, if you can afford it, hire those three experts." They came to Alabama
on separate occasions, and at the end of
it, they did something that I had never
heard of. They tried to make the gun
match and it still wouldn't match.
We take this new evidence now to the Attorney General by the name of Bill Pryor
and Bill Pryor was quoted as
saying, "It would be a waste of the
taxpayer money to take one hour to
reexamine those bullets, and it would be
a waste of my time." And for not doing his job as attorney
general, George W. Bush appointed him to a federal lifetime appointment. We goes
before the next Attorney General, a
man by the name of Troy King, and he refused.
He lost in the next election. And then we
came up against a man by the name of
Luther Strange, and he too refused to do the right thing. And for not doing his job, he
took Jeff Sessions' seat at the Senate.
Then one day, Mr. Stevenson came to the
prison, he said, "Ray, the judges in Alabama is not going to do
the right thing," he said, "I need your
permission to take your case to the
United States Supreme Court," he said, "but
I need to explain to you, if they rule
against you, the state of Alabama will
kill you within two years." I had lost my
mother, and at that point in time, I
really didn't care. I looked at
Mr. Stevenson, and I said, "File my case to the United States Supreme Court." They filed
the case and two years later, the United
States Supreme Court did something in my
case that it have never done in the
history of the Court. All nine judges
ruled that I was entitled to a new trial.
And to this day... [applause]
They send the case back to Alabama. We
goes to Birmingham, the prosecution stand
up and tell the judge, "Your honor, it is
with great sadness that we have to inform
the court that EJI have stolen the gun
in question." They put it more lightly - they
forgot to return it. And then, EJI is the top
of the line, they hand the judge the
paperwork showing that they had turned
the gun back over. The judge give them
time to find the gun and a few months
later they find the gun and they come
back to the courtroom and say, "Your Honor, we found the gun but it is with great
sadness that we inform the court, we
have lost the bullets that goes to the gun."
All of this time, I'm still sitting
in jail, and finally the prosecution asks
one of his own experts that testified
30 years ago to come back and
reexamine the bullets. He comes back
and he reexamined the bullets and
he tells the prosecution the bullets do
not match the way they matched 30 years
ago. But the bullet matched exactly 30
years ago the same that they did 30
years later. My life was not worth him
telling the truth. And then, through
electronics, they notified the judge that
they was dropping all charges against me.
[applause]
Thirty years of pure hell. Thirty years
because I was born black. Thirty years
because I didn't have the money to hire
a lawyer. If that's what you want for
justice, I come to Montgomery today to
ask you one of the most profound
questions. The state of Alabama was
seeking justice, the highest justice they
could. They wanted to execute me, and they was going to do it in your name, and they
was calling it justice. I want someone to
stand up and tell me where is my justice?
To this day, nobody in the governor's office,
or the Attorney General's office, or nowhere have had
the decency to say, "Mr. Hinton, we're sorry." I've tried my best to believe that
they haven't said they're sorry because
I'm black. But every night I wrestle
with this question - why haven't I gotten
an apology?
You took 30 years from me. You knew from
day one that those bullets was not the
bullets. And here I am three years later,
the state of Alabama have yet to apologize.
And tonight I leave you with this
question - what would you do if they came
for you? What would you do if you was charged
with a crime you didn't commit?
What would you do if you didn't have the
money to hire a decent defense? What
would you do if the system looked at you
for the color of your skin than the
merits of the case? What would you do if
you was found guilty? What would you do if you took a
polygraph test and no one believed you?
What would you do if you had to spend
the rest of your life in a cell the size
of a bathroom? What would you do if
you've been waiting all your life to die?
How would you survive? What would you do
after 30 years, they finally set you free?
Who would you be? Answer those questions.
Thank you so much.
[applause]
Thank you, thank you.
PIPER: Ray, thank you for sharing your story,
it's an act of profound generosity.
RAY: Thank you so much.
PIPER: You're very kind.
And yeah, your story is instructive
of what kindness and humor will do to
carry you through the most unimaginable
circumstances, so thank you for that.
[applause]
PIPER: Professor Bright, Steve,
STEVE: Yes Piper, hi.
PIPER: You helped train Bryan Stevenson
so that he would be ready when the call
came to free people like Ray which is an
amazing, an amazing reality. Can you share
with us some of the, you know, the legal
and the policy points that help us
understand how such a travesty of
justice can transpire in this day and
age, though of course all of you who have
been experiencing both the museum and
the memorial know how we got here, right?
STEVE: Thank you Piper, good afternoon everyone. You know, I teach at law school and I
want law students to understand what the
reality is of criminal justice in our
country today and you cannot improve
upon having Ray Hinton talk to your law
school students and tell them about his
case and what happened all the way
through the process. He came to Yale and
he filled up the auditorium at Yale with
undergraduates and law students and it
was just a few months after he had been
released and it moved them as it moved
you. And there's several lessons I just
talk about real quickly about this.
First of all, we've learned from doing
this work over 40 years, that the
criminal justice system is the part of
American society that's been least
affected by the Civil Rights Movement.
I go around the country in the deep South
in the years that I've been here and
things have improved on school boards
and in the legislature, in other places,
city councils, not to where they should
be but certainly different.
But I go to court rooms, like the
courtroom where Ray Hinton was tried,
and I look ahead and the jury's all white,
the prosecutor's white, the
court-appointed lawyers are white, the
only person of color in the front of the
courtroom is the person on trial. And
this is often in communities that have
populations of thirty, forty percent
African-American in many of the places
where I am. George Kendall and I once took the case
of William Anthony Brooks, about 1979, he
was convicted and sentenced to death by
an all-white jury in Columbus, Georgia.
And when we were reading the transcript
of that trial, we could tell from the
cold transcript, by the way that jurors
were treated by the prosecutor and by
the judge, which jurors were white and
which jurors were black. The black jurors
who knew anything about the case, and
everybody knew about the case - it was
very highly publicized, they would be led
by the prosecutor and the judge to say - 
the white jurors - to say they could be
fair and impartial. And the judge would
keep them on. But then there were other
jurors who would be asked about it and
they were led to say well they probably
couldn't be fair, given what they know.
And it's fairly easy to ask leading
questions and elicit those answers. And
we guessed that maybe the ones who are
being led to say they couldn't be fair
were African-Americans. And we picked
every African-American without knowing
anything but a cold transcript, nothing
but a typewritten page, we could tell
every one. And the ones that weren't
excluded that way, of course the
prosecutor used their discretionary
strikes, so that in a community 30%
African-American, William was tried by an
all-white jury. He had two terrible
court-appointed lawyers. The judge who
presided was a man named John Henry Land and George and I said after we looked at
the transcript and analyzed that case, he
said, "This was, this was a legal lynching."
That was what jumped out at us. And then
we found out, a number of years later, that
John Henry Land's father, Brewster Land,
had actually participated in two
lynchings in Columbus, Georgia. He had
actually once help break a man out
of the courtroom and take him out to the end of the trolley line and lynch him.
So Judge Land grew up - and this was not a secret, I mean it was on the front page of
the Columbus newspaper when these
lynchings happened. So you see the
relationship there which I think is what
the museum is showing - the relationship
from slavery to mass incarceration. The
other thing that I want to point out
is that 80 percent of all the death sentences in this country are in the states of the
old Confederacy. Before the Civil War, Michigan
and two other states in the North had
already abolished the death penalty.
Others were limiting the death penalty
to just murder cases and no others. But in
the South, where you had a captive
population, where you had slaves and
putting them in prison was really not a
punishment, they were already in prison.
So having that death penalty was for - even
for things like passing out leaflets
was a capital offense in the Southern
states. Well 'cause they're worried about
slave rebellion and so forth. And there's
also something that historian Dan Carter
points this out in his great book about
Scottsboro, the Scottsboro case here
in Alabama, that when the South started
getting a bad press for all the
lynchings, they realized that you could
move it into the courthouse and you
could try a case to an all-white jury
with a presiding judge who is going to
be as a part of the prosecution team,
really, and incompetent court-appointed
lawyers, and you can accomplish the same
thing but without having it in the
courthouse lawn or on the front steps of
the courthouse which you accomplish the
same thing. You see cases where they
would say to the mob, "Just let the system
take its course." What that meant is give
the guy a one-day trial, find him guilty -
one case in Kentucky, they actually
executed the guy after an hour-long
trial right up behind the courthouse. And
the Courier-Journal, the newspaper in
Louisville, wrote an editorial and said, "Well,
it was awful short, it didn't seem very
fair, but at least it wasn't a lynching."
This was an improvement over lynchings.
So we see this relationship,
that's why tracing this from slavery
through lynching, convict leasing, Jim
Crow and all the way to mass
incarceration is so important.
And the other point I just want to make
that's so critical, the major consequence of
being poor in this system, is having a
court-appointed lawyer. And in Alabama
which doesn't have a public defender
system, maybe in a few places, Birmingham
here in Montgomery, but not many places,
the court-appointed lawyers, such as the
one Mr. Hinton got, are often people who
don't even specialize in criminal law,
let alone in capital punishment law, and
very often are people who are taking a
large volume of cases, spending very
little time on any case, sometimes the
lawyers are as racist as everybody else
in the system, sometimes overtly so,
sometimes maybe subconsciously, but that
is so much a factor and in who gets the
death penalty and who doesn't. I wrote a
piece a while back that said the death
penalty not for committing the worst
crime but for the misfortune of being
assigned the worst lawyer. And this case
is an example of that and there many
others. William Brooks's case
was an example of that. And so many of
the cases that I've had, three cases in
Georgia where the court-appointed lawyer
referred to their client by a racial
slur before the jury, told the jury - 
George Dungee's lawyer said, "he's a little
hundred and eighty-eight pound n***** man." That's what his own lawyer called him in
closing argument. In Houston, Texas there've been three lawyers who slept during
capital trials, court-appointed lawyers
who could not even stay awake during
their clients' trial. That sort of gives
you a new sense of what it means to have
the dream team, particularly if you're
poor.
But these are systemic problems and of
course the availability of Bryan
Stevenson to come to the rescue here was
because not of any state program that
provides lawyers for the appellate
process but because of an independent
non-profit public interest legal project
here, the Equal Justice Initiative, which
could take the case and do the work and
get the experts and bring about the
exoneration of Mr. Hinton. [applause]
PIPER: Steve, thanks...
STEVE: And one other thing I would
just say is that for many people, there
is nobody to represent them at that
stage. You're not entitled to a lawyer at
that stage. You've gotta have EJI or the
Southern Center for Human Rights or the
Legal Defense Fund, NAACP
Legal Defense and Education Fund, you
have to have a lawyer like that but if
you don't - and we've had over a hundred
cases now where in death penalty cases, the lawyers missed the deadline for filing.
And what that means is there's no review
at all. That means if you're Anthony
Hinton, Anthony Ray Hinton, and your lawyer doesn't file within the deadline, you get
no review by the courts whatsoever. You
get executed. You think that couldn't be
the case. My students have a hard time
believing that, but by the end of the
course, they realize that very many
people we put to death in this country
have had abysmally poor lawyers at trial,
even worse lawyers on appeal, and have
often had lawyers who couldn't even
follow their papers on time during the
review process. And that's the lot of
criminal justice for poor people in this
country today, in many many places, many
cases.
PIPER: And the brutal reality is that
people convicted of capital crimes have
more access to counsel than did people
who are convicted for more, for the, you
know, the vast majority of other things
that people end up incarcerated for,
right, so that access to any kind of
capital defense or capital appeal is
more unusual for incarcerated people. So
we're talking about harsh
punishment here, harsh, harsh punishment
and for those of you who have been able
to get up to the memorial already and to
be drawn in at the museum, you understand the history of harsh punishment in this
country that it is irrevocably, you know,
grown out of the soil of chattel slavery
and also the forced removal of
indigenous people as well, and that harsh
punishment was absolutely essential to
maintaining those systems, those economic
and cultural systems. But you know, it's
important, I think, to point out that
harsh punishment doesn't only apply to
these capital cases,
it doesn't only apply to the death
penalty, it doesn't only apply to things
like juvenile life without parole. We are
the only nation in the world that
sentences children to die in prison.
There are more ordinary and everyday ways
that we see harsh punishment playing out
in the community, right, every single day.
I want to tell you all a little bit
about Ramona Brandt.
Ramona Brandt, yeah, Ramona Brandt is a
woman who was incarcerated in the same
prison where I was incarcerated, and
Ramona was convicted of a crime
remarkably similar to my crime of
conviction.
She was convicted for the first time
she'd never been convicted of a crime
before, like me, it was a drug offense
very much like my own drug offense, and
you know, it was a drug offense that grew
out of a relationship that she was in,
you know, she had a boyfriend, I had a
girlfriend. Unlike me, Ramona Brandt
was in a relationship that was
dangerous to leave, right. I was able to
safely and successfully leave
that relationship. Ramona was not.
I didn't meet Ramona Brandt when we were
incarcerated in the same prison though,
because I was serving a 15-month
sentence in the minimum security section
of the prison, and Ramona Brandt had
received a life sentence. So she was held
in a different section of the prison.
I met Ramona Brandt at the White House
because Ramona Brandt was one of this
very small number of people who received
a commutation of her sentence, and I met
her on that day, she had just been freed
in February of 2016, and she had had lunch with the President
along with several of the other people
who had received commutations.
She was a remarkable, remarkable woman
and I wish that she was here on stage
today with us but she's not because she
passed away in February of this year. She
had two precious years of freedom after
serving 20 years in prison of that life
sentence. And I think the point, you know, I think
that when we look at women and girls in
the criminal justice system ,we see these
very ordinary and everyday examples of
harsh punishment in this country. It's
not just restricted to the death penalty,
it's not just restricted to
things like juvenile life without parole.
Every day in our community, you know, some
of the most vulnerable people are being
targeted by this harsh punishment. This
is the society that
we've sustained over so many hundreds of
years and this is what it is for us to
change, right, so I want, we're gonna
talk a little bit about reform here, and
what it's gonna take to make sure that
you know that Ray or Ramona, that we
never see people treated that way again
in our community. So, gentlemen,
Professor Bright maybe you want to
comment just quickly on some of those
policy and practice levers that we might
think about when we think about these
kinds of either, you know, wrongful
convictions or completely inappropriate
sentences?
STEVE: Well, you were saying that and
talking about severe punishment, so I was
thinking of Mr. Robert Caston, who's
sitting out here somewhere, I spent most
yesterday chatting with Mr. Caston, he
spent forty-five years in the Louisiana
prison at Angola, Angola Louisiana State
Penitentiary. He was sentenced as a
juvenile and he was released in 2010
only because of the work of Sia Sanneh
and Bryan Stevenson and Equal Justice Institute.
45 years of a person's life,
sentenced as a seventeen-year-old child.
Those have fortunately, those kinds of
sentences are at least being reviewed
but many of them, many people are not as
fortunate as he. One thing I would say
is an encouraging development with the
death penalty but somewhat discouraging on
the other side of it. In the 1990s, we
sentenced as many as three hundred and
fifteen people to death in a single year.
Last year, only 39, the year before that
35. So there's been incredible decrease
in the number of death sentences and
they're all being inflicted in just a handful of
counties in the country. We are actually,
I don't know how close, but we were fairly
close to the day when we'll finally make
permanent, absolute, and unequivocal the
commandment, thou shalt not kill. But
accompanying that has been the increase
of life imprisonment without any
possibility of parole, which is a death
sentence. It is a sentence that you will
die in prison, that you have absolutely -
you're 18 years old, and you're sentenced
to life imprisonment without any
possibility of parole. You're going to
live the rest of your life - you may be a
model citizen, you may be like Mr. Caston and not have a single disciplinary report,
but it doesn't matter. You're going to
die in prison. And those cases are not
getting, you know, so much of the
resources is, of course, is going to be
put into death cases and be getting people like Mr. Hinton
from being executed for a crime he
didn't do. But I will tell you, there are
people in prison serving life without
parole for crimes they didn't do, and
they don't have lawyers. They don't have
anybody who can come to their rescue.
There's an increasing number of these
extremely draconian sentences being
imposed all over the country, and of
course here in Alabama, you can see it
short of even in the death cases. The last
person executed was 83 years old.
The person executed before that was 75 years old. They tried to execute Doyle Hamm, who
was in his late 60s and suffering from
cancer, but despite pricking him over and
over and over again, they never could
inject him with the lethal drugs to kill
him. It used to be when a person went
into a execution chamber to be killed,
they didn't come out. They came out on a
stretcher, they went to the funeral home.
We've had three people in the modern
history of the death penalty who have
gone in to be executed and have come
back out after the effort to execute
efforts to execute them have been
unsuccessful. And so
we're gonna have this great problem with
these geriatric prisons and these very
elderly prisoners, who have of course had bad food, not not much exercise, not much
sunshine, who are increasingly growing
old in our prisons. It's tragic for them.
It's a great human rights violation. It's extraordinarily expensive for the
society. And you meet some of these
people like I've talked about, and you
see what a waste this is to have these
exceptionally severe sentences for people.
PIPER: Absolutely, so Ray, you talked about that conversation in the squad car, right, with
the man who laid it out for you, why
you should expect conviction, conviction
conviction, conviction. 95% of elected
prosecutors in this country are white.
Right? And that's about 2,400 prosecutors,
that's the elected numbers. Of those,
of all those prosecutors, 79% of them are men, only four percent of prosecutors
are men of color, and only one percent of
prosecutors are women of color.
Can you just talk to me a little bit about how that played out in a personal level and what
kind of change we need to see on this
front when we think about who holds so
many life-and-death decisions in the
palm of their hands and sometimes it's a
judge but in many ways those of you who
know a lot about the system know that it
is the prosecutor.
RAY: Well, I personally
think that it all starts with money. The
reason we don't have a lot of blacks in
judgeship, running for office, they have
made it too expensive. You have to have
money to do campaign work.
You know, in this country, it is a shame that in the state of Alabama, we are willing to pay
our school teachers
$35,000-$40,000 a year
to teach our kids, but yet we
willing to spend $2 million to execute
a man or a woman. I really find that profoundly disrespectful, disgraceful. And I what I
can't understand is, that I often tell
people, use your vote to get this
system the way you want it. You know, most people, when I came out of prison, even my
best friend thought I wanted a big ol'
whopper. And I didn't want a whopper,
I wanted Mr. Stevenson to do two things
for me, if he never did anything else. I
asked Mr. Stevenson, "Is it any way
possible that he could arrange so I
could tell my story to the whole world?"
And I said, "Mr. Stevenson, is there some
way that you can get my voting rights
restored?" [applause]
I say that, and I haven't a missed a vote yet.
And I want to say that we will spend
money on prison, but yet when we come to
education, we want our kids brought up
dumb and stupid. And that will keep them
out of the legal system but only will
put them behind the bars and wires in
the prison. In my book, I wrote that I
started a book club on death row.
These are men that dropped out of
school at eighth and seventh grades. And
to be honest with you, I said, "What kinda,
the hell, I would have dropped out if I could!" But my mother wouldn't let me drop out.
Didn't the police come and make ya'll go
to school? Well, what I've learned, the
system want them to be done, the system
can find money for everything in this
country, but they can't find money to pay
our teachers, we can't build schools, you know [applause]
I often think about those men that I
started this book club with, and I had read
the book, "Go Tell It on the Mountain" by
James Baldwin, and I got six people,
only six, the warden wouldn't let me... and when they read the book, each one of them had a different
view of the book. And I realized at that
moment, society plays a part, because no
one ever took the time out to try to get
them to learn. We are just a country that
don't give a damn about nobody but ourself. As long as it is not in my backyard...
you know, I often say this and I'm gonna
bring it up and I'm gonna tie it together, but you
know, when the drugs was over on this
side of the neighborhood, didn't nobody
give a damn. But the moment
the mayor, and moment the senators and
their daughters was getting hooked
on it, all of a sudden, it's an epidemic.
[applause]
It should've been an epidemic when it
was over here, and if you had treated it as
an epidemic over here, you wouldn't have
to worry about it coming over here. And
so that's what we found. In this system we have, it's never been,
needed a worse overhaul than it does
now. We need, we need, and I'm not going to
always put it on the prosecution, the
judges, we need good lawyers. We need
lawyers to stop telling people to cop
out. If going to trial break the
system, break the system then. But I'm
just against that we can find money to
to execute a man and we haven't made ourself any better, but we're not willing
to give that little girl, at five and six,
a head start. I often think about, I'm
gonna tell you one more thing before
time. That book, "The Sun Does Shine,"
that's a good book, y'all better
read that book, get that book! [laughter] But there's a man
in my book I talk about, he was a Klansman, Henry Hayes. Henry Hayes was not born with
three K's in front of his name. Henry
Hayes was born here Henry Francis Hayes,
but his mother and father taught him to
hate all his life. And I often ask, where was
this village that we say, it take a
village to raise a child?
Where was Child Protective Service when
this young man was being taught to hate?
Why they didn't go in there and get him?
But we have a system that will arrest
you for spanking your child, trying to
teach him right, but this young boy was
being mentally abused and nobody gave a
damn. But then, his father gave him an
order to go out and kill the first black
man that he came across. And he happened
to come across a 19-year-old black male,
they hung him, they cut his genitals off.
And this village, they came out and they
found him guilty. And this village said,
"This world would be better if you wasn't
in it." But I looked, when I got to know
Hayes, I didn't put all that
responsibility on Henry Hayes. I put
it on a system that didn't give a damn
about this little boy. If they had, they
would have made sure that he was in an
environment that he could get an
education, he could have became something. But we
just don't care. We allow the
politician to give us a thirty second
soundbite, and they greasing their pockets,
and all of us is having to deal with a
system that is nowhere near fair and honest.
We have a system that gives you a
lawyer and even Professor Bright will
tell you, the law states you just need
a lawyer, it don't say he have to be
woke during the trial, and
we need, we need to overhaul this
system from top to bottom. We need to
take our anger, not in the streets, not
burning buildings, we need to take it
straight to the polls, and just like we
put Doug Jones in office, we'll put
some more in office.
[applause]
PIPER: Let's talk just a little bit about the
prospect and also the pitfalls of reform.
More and more when I talk in public, I'm
not talking about reform, because, you
know, truthfully, we cannot tinker around
the edges of this system, can we?
We need transformation, not reform. So as an example, when we look at the juvenile
criminal system in this country, the way
that we hold children accountable, on the
one, well, first and foremost, you need to
know if you don't know already, that
black children are more than four times
more likely to be put into prison than
white children, right? Something totally
unacceptable in the
first place. You need to know that the
juvenile justice system is in some ways
an area where we have seen progress,
because we have far fewer kids in
juvenile prison today than we did 15
years ago, right. Between 2003 and 2013,
the juvenile prison population was
reduced by 47% nationally, right, that's
actually great. We have far fewer kids
locked up in juvie prison, though far too many
kids are still being transferred into
the adult system, right. But here's the
other thing you need to know, during that
same period of time of success at
reducing that population, the racial
disparities in the juvenile system
increased by 15 percent, right. So that
got worse. The racial - even as
we succeeded at having fewer kids locked
up in juvenile prison, and if I was, you
know, in charge, we would have zero
juvenile prisons. There would be no
prison for children. We have to think
about how reformation or transformation
is intentional and thoughtful and the
fact that racial justice has to be
central to those reforms because what
we've seen transpiring in that juvenile
system reveals that, okay, we're
get some progress in some respects, but
who's gonna be left high and dry?
Children of color, and vastly
disproportionately African-American
children. So when you think about reforms
that have that centrality around the
question of racial justice, it's pretty
hard to find them, I'm just gonna point
that out to you. But I think about what's
happened in Chicago. For those of you who
don't know some of the history around
policing in Chicago, there was a
gentleman, a gentleman is a stretch.
There was a man named Jon Burge who was a police commander for many years in
Chicago who ran a crew of police who
tortured many many many black people and
forced confessions and sent innocent
people to prison and broke the law and
it took a long time to hold Jon Burge
accountable but one of the results of
that quest for accountability by the
community and by community organizers
who worked long and hard was that not
only, you know, Jon Burge was sent to prison for
four and a half years and he did get to
keep his police pension however there
was there has been created in Chicago a
reparations fund for his victims it's a
five point five million dollar
reparations fund over a hundred million
dollars public dollars were spent around
you know sort of the violence the police
violence that he created and as
important as the reparations for those
survivors of violence also this history
will now be taught in the Chicago,
Chicago Public Schools.
When I think about why we're all here
today why we've gathered together
why we have been up to the mountain and
why we have been to the museum and I
think about Chicago we need to see more
of that right we cannot prevent there
ever being another situation like yours
Ray or Ramona's without that truth and
reconciliation process that we have seen
in other countries and that Bryan talks
about so flawlessly you know so
gentlemen I always like to leave folks
with some hope right that's it that
story of Chicago is a tough story but
that's where we want to get, I wonder if
there's some other examples you know Ray
your book against all odds is such a
beautifully hopeful book you know there
are it made me cry many many times while
I was reading it but it also made me
laugh many many times and I appreciate
it more and you know Professor Bright
I'm curious the areas that give you the
most hope going forward.
Well I think this I think we're at least
in some places and I'm not sure it's for
the right reasons it's probably for the
reasons of how much it costs to
institutionalize people 24 hours a day 7
days a week forever we've been building
our way out as we put more and more
people in prison building more and more
prisons it's not sustainable and so
finally there's a look at why are all
these people in prison and why are they
there for so long and we're least
beginning to look at addiction as a
health problem and not as a criminal
justice problem and we can deal...
I mean we are seeing places where the
number of people incarcerated is going
down where prisons are being closed
nowhere near fast enough to get rid of
2.2 million people in prisons but that's
certainly one thing, secondly we have
seen around the country in Philadelphia
maybe as Exhibit A on this very
progressive prosecutors have been
elected who've adopted...a more
thoughtful approach I always of course
been a big advocate of the right to a lawyer
people accused of crimes this is why
anybody accused of a crime has got to be
represented by a competent lawyer that
knows what they're doing
whose client oriented and who's
determined to do the absolute best and
provide the most zealous representation,
we still have a long way to go in an
awful lot of places including most
counties in Alabama but there are places
in Georgia for example we have a capital
there as a capital defender office which
now people facing the death penalty are
represented by lawyers who actually know
what they're doing who have specialized
that only representing people in death
penalty cases and we've gone a few years
now without any death sentences, the same
thing in Virginia where there's an
office now people that specialize so
instead of just any lawyer being pulled
off the you know every kind of practice
under the sun from title searches to
divorces to death penalty cases we now
have lawyers that actually are trained
competent, have people that know how to
investigate the cases build up the
penalty phase cases in mitigation that's
a huge change and I think that's one of
the reasons why we've seen the number of
death sentences declined so dramatically
from over 300 in 1996 to 39 last year
if that number complete continues to go
down at some point it's just not worth
the candle but there's so many other
aspects
of the criminal courts where there's a
need for competent representation and
all the different specialized we know
that many many people been wrongly
convicted of arson for example it's very
complicated to do an arson case there's
a lot of science there and I won't go
into it except to say if you've got
people accused of that kind of crime
you've got to have people who know how
to defend against that kind of crime and
so we're making some progress but of
course the biggest challenge is why
would a government whether it's federal
state or local most of it is state by
the way ninety five percent of people in
prison are state custody, why would a
state that wants to fine, imprison or
kill someone pay to defeat that very
purpose by providing the person with a
competent lawyer, of course the answer to that
it's Constitution says that's what we
have to do but as Robert F. Kennedy
said when he was Attorney General the
poor person accused of a crime has no
lobby and people of goodwill and people
who care about justice have to be that
lobby.
I am hopeful for the things that I've
already witnessed in this state, there was
a time we couldn't sit in the
restaurant, there was a time we couldn't
vote, now we can vote, there was a time
we couldn't go to your university now we
can go to the university, all of those
things took time and it took people to
finally realize that we all are God's
children
and enough is enough and I'm hopeful for
the thing like the museum, there was a
time I wouldn't never thought something
like that would be built and
especially created by someone like Mr.
Stevenson and those are the things that
makes me hopeful are the things that we
have already overcome we got a long ways
to go
and every day we should wake up to strive
to make not only our lives better but
someone else and so I'm hopeful for that.
Thank you gentlemen, we could talk all
day but we are out of time,
thank you.
