Friday, January 3, 2020
Category: News
An evening with Anthony Ray Hinton, Keynote lecture for the 2020 Humanities Symposium
"Surviving Criminal Justice in America"
Anthony Ray Hinton is a survivor of Alabama’s death row. His story is a decades-long journey to exoneration and freedom. In 1985, Hinton was convicted of the unsolved murders of two fast-food restaurant managers based onthe testimony of ballistics experts for the state, which claimed that the crime bullets came from a dusty revolver found in his mother’s closet. Without the benefit of a competent expert to challenge the state’s theory (Hinton’s lawyers hired a ballistics expert who was blind in one eye), an all-white jury convicted him and he was sentenced to death. After years of petitioning to have the revolver re-analyzed, three independent experts concluded that the bullets could not have been fired from his mother’s revolver. With the assistance of the Equal Justice Initiative, led by attorney Bryan Stevenson, Hinton was freed in 2015.
Since his release, Hinton has traveled globally sharing his story and discussing the changes needed to prevent similar injustices from happening to others. In 2018, Hinton published “The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row,” which was selected for Oprah’s Book Club and is a New York Times best-seller.
Date: Thursday, Feb. 20, 2020
Location: Calvin and Janet High Center for Worship and Performing Arts, Parmer Hall
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Tickets
Free tickets are required for this event. To reserve, please contact the Messiah College Ticket Office at 717-691-6036 or online at messiah.edu/tickets. You can also visit the Ticket Office's Facebook page here.