Tobias column: Forgiveness not super-human, but unforgiveness is inhuman

He married model and movie star Halle Berry. Then he had tea with the Queen of England. All in an afternoon.

Of course, this was all in the head of Anthony Ray Hinton, and that particular afternoon was one of over 10,000 afternoons that he spent on death row in Alabama. In 1985, he was wrongfully convicted for the shooting death of two white fast-food managers in Birmingham. The only evidence was a statement that ballistics tests matched four crime scene bullets to Hinton’s mother’s gun.

The arresting detective tried to get Hinton to sign a blank sheet of paper, telling him that it was just to confirm that he had already read his rights. The same detective infamously told him this: “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. I can give you five reasons why they are going to convict you. Number one, you’re Black. Number two, a white man is gonna say you shot him. Number three, you’re gonna have a white district attorney. Number four, you’re gonna have a white judge. And number five, you’re gonna have an all-white jury. Can you hear the words: ‘conviction, conviction, conviction?’”

That jury disregarded the testimony of Hinton’s supermarket boss, who testified that he was cleaning the supermarket at the time of the murder. Despite the many miscarriages of justice, Hinton was put on death row.

Thirty years later, Jefferson County prosecutors admitted that they could not match the bullets to the scene of the crime. In April 2015, he was finally released from prison, after his conviction was overturned.

The state of Alabama has refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing on its part, claiming that Hinton “has not proved his innocence.”

If I were in Hinton’s shoes, I’d probably be consumed with anger, nursing a towering grievance at Alabama, the detective, the jury, and the horrendously deficient public defender who didn’t bother to get a real expert to refute the slapdash ballistics report. I don’t know what I’d do with a state system that confined me for 30 years, just down the hall from the electric chair — a state that never has offered any sort of restitution, and has never once asked forgiveness.

But Hinton is a better man than I. He says that while the state of Alabama has not asked for forgiveness, he has decided to forgive the corrupt men who prosecuted him. Not so that they can sleep at night, but so that he can sleep at night. Forgiveness, Hinton urges in his book, “The Sun Does Shine,” is the only way to be free.

A few years ago, one of my students took his son to traffic court. The boy had completed the requirements for a Virginia driver’s license. And it was the practice, in that municipality, for the judge to award licenses to new drivers. She informed them that until they turned 18, they were not permitted to drive between midnight and 4 a.m. Then the judge asked a young man, who had been seated in the front row, to come up in front of the bench and share why he was there.

He said that he had gotten his license a year and a half before. Soon thereafter, he visited a friend late at light until 2 a.m., then he drove home, in violation of his curfew. It was the middle of the night. He was a new driver, sleepy and tired.

Two miles from his home, his car hit a young woman, out walking in the neighborhood. She lost her life that night.

The young man wept as he recounted the tragedy and his part in it. Then the judge stepped in to finish the story. She said that at the court case and the sentencing, this young man was honest, remorseful, and penitent. He took full responsibility.

The judge was merciful, because of this. She suspended his license, but she suspended his jail sentence. But only if he would return to the court every two weeks to tell other young drivers of what he had done.

But on this occasion, when my friend and his son were there, something else happened. This time, the judge paused, and then asked a man, sitting in the back, to stand and introduce himself. He said that he was the father of the young woman who died that fateful night.

Then the judge asked the young man if he had anything to say to this father. He broke down and bared his broken heart in remorse.

There was silence from the father. But he walked up toward the young man and embraced him. And said in a hushed voice, “I forgive you.”

That father is a better man than I.

Two thousand years ago, Someone said, at the point of the greatest agony and most egregious dereliction, on a dark and grievous Friday afternoon, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” “Them” is all of us.

Jesus is a better man than I.

I would like to say that forgiveness is super-human. But I’d be wrong. Unforgiveness is what is unnatural. Unforgiveness —the harboring of grudges and the nurturing of grievances — is what is inhumane.

Forgiveness is the only way of humanity. Forgiveness is the only way to be free.