The plot is chronological, and readers will feel the impatience and sheer injustice through every page. The disregard for those lost years haunts me. After those two years, the judge returned the previous judge’s exact document with the margins changed. We should not write passively about that, though: that the state of Alabama stole.įor example, Hinton waited two years for a judge’s ruling. The manner in which officials treated the years of this man’s time as if they did not matter-that almost thirty years of his life when most people get married, build a family, create a career-were robbed.

One individual instance does not stand out, but rather the culmination does: I don’t know the most troubling aspect of the book, and the injustices are too numerous for this review. Hinton weaves the list of injustices through the book as he organizes a death row book club, grapples with God, and winds through the court system. Hinton could not afford an attorney, and his state-appointed one carelessly (purposefully?) mishandled his trial (see the above example). The ballistic expert at his trial was blind in one eye and did not know how to work the microscope to examine the bullets that the state claimed were shot from Hinton’s gun. He was charged with committing two murders, one of which occurred while he was at work, where numerous alibis said he remained all night. – Bryan StevensonĪlabama police arrested Anthony Ray Hinton while he mowed his mother’s lawn.

Reading his story is difficult but necessary. The Sun Does Shine makes a perfect addition to any high school classroom library. That feeling is why I have to force myself to write this review. That squeeze on a stomach that turns to fire and then rises and then you’re crying. I finished The Sun Does Shine a bit ago, but every time I sit to write this review, I get a feeling in my stomach.

The sun does shine book