Mindful Campus Speaker Series with Anthony Ray Hinton

The Crown Institute invites you to a stirring keynote lecture by The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row. When asked if he felt anger toward those who wrongly imprisoned him, Mr. Hinton replied, “I chose to stay vigilant to any signs of anger or hate in my heart. They took thirty years of my life. If I couldn’t forgive, if I couldn’t feel joy, that would be like giving them the rest of my life.”

Join us on Thursday, October 24th, 2:00 - 3:00 PM at the CU Boulder Center for Academic Success and Engagement (CASE), for this special talk. Sponsored by the Renée Crown Wellness Institute, this is the Fall 2024 keynote lecture in our Mindful Campus Speaker Series.

Anthony Ray Hinton survived for 30 years on Alabama's death row. His story is a decades-long journey to exoneration and freedom. In 1985, Mr. Hinton was convicted of the unsolved murders of two fast-food restaurant managers based on the testimony of ballistics experts for the State who claimed that the crime bullets came from a dusty revolver found in Mr. Hinton's mother’s closet. Without the benefit of a competent expert to challenge the State’s theory (Mr. Hinton’s lawyer hired a ballistics expert who was blind in one eye), an all-white jury convicted Mr. Hinton 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, Mr. Hinton was freed in 2015. Since his release, Mr. Hinton has traveled the world sharing his story and discussing the changes that need to be made to prevent similar injustices from happening to other people. In 2018, Mr. 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 bestseller. In 2019, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from St. Bonaventure University, and in 2023, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Emory University.

Host or Publisher Renée Crown Wellness Institute