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A TIME TO KILL

A TIME TO KILL is about a black father whose 10-year old daughter was raped by two white
men.

In Canton, Mississippi, Tonya Hailey was on her way home from a grocery store when two
white men named, James Louis "Pete" Willard and Billy Ray Cobb grabbed and forcibly raped
her. After raping Tonya, Pete and Billy Ray tried to kill her by throwing full beer cans at her and
finally hung her on a branch of tree. However, to their surprise, Tonya was able to survive and
later on told the police what the two men did to her. Pete and Billy Ray are found at a roadside
bar, where they had been bragging about what they did to Tonya.
Tonya's understandably distraught and enraged father, Carl Lee Hailey, remembers a case from
a year ago, when four white men raped an African-American girl in a nearby town, and got
acquitted. Carl is determined to not let that happen in this case. While deputy Dwayne Powell
Looney is escorting Pete and Billy Ray up a flight of stairs to a court room, Carl emerges from
the building's basement with an assault rifle, and he kills Pete and Billy Ray for what they did to
Tonya. Carl is later arrested.
Carl was represented by Jake Tyler Brigance, who is an inexperience white lawyer. Helping Jake
on the case are his former law professor Lucien Wilbanks, fellow attorney Harry Rex Vonner,
and a brilliant law student Ellen Roark. Presiding over the trial is white judge Omar Noose, and
the prosecution attorney is Rufus Buckley, who would like nothing more than to win the case
because he realizes that a murder conviction will get him promoted.
Carl Lee Hailey entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. Brigance petitioned for a
change of venue because he realized that a white judge will not let a black man be free for
killing two white men. As expected, Judge Noose denies bail and denies Brigance's petition for
a change of venue.
Billy Ray Cobb's brother Freddie Lee Cobb wants revenge on Carl, so Freddy gets the help of the
Mississippi branch of the KKK, led by Mississippi grand dragon Stump Sisson. KKK is a group of
bad men, who does not support the idea of black men getting the same rights and privileges
being experience by white men. That night, a KKK member is found trying to plant a bomb
under Jake's porch. Jake's secretary Ethel Twitty and her husband Bud are also attacked by the
KKK. Still, Jake, Harry, Lucien, and Ellen continue to help Carl.
FIRST DAY OF TRIAL: IMPEACHING AN EXPERT WITNESS - LAYING THE PREDICATE
Brigance asked Sheriff Walls, the one who arrested James Louis Willard and Billy Ray Cobb, if
the two signed a confession admitting that they raped Tonya Hailey. However, Judge Noose
disallowed the question and said that they were not trying the rape of Tonya but the murder of
two white men.
Another witness for the prosecution is Dr. Wilbert Roadheaver, clinical director of the Whitfield
Facility for the Criminally Insane. He invented a rule, the McNaughton Rule, which states that a
person must be unable to tell right from wrong and/ or be unaware of the consequences of his
actions to be termed legally insane. He testified that when he examined Carl Lee Hailey, the
latter is considered sane when he committed the murder, he said that his mental condition was
without any defects.
However, on cross- examination, Brigance was able to discredit Dr. Roadheaver by asking him
about a prisoner whom he found as legally sane during trial, but such prisoner was admitted to
the Mental Facility, where Dr. Roadheaver works.
Brigance: “Do you normally admit patients, keep and treat them for 10 years if they’re of sound
mind?”
DR: “Of course not.”
Brigance: “Then it would be fair to say that you find insane people sane for the purposes of
trial”

The defense presents their expert witness, Dr. Willard Tyrell Bass. Dr. Bass testified that
Tonya’s rape caused relapse on Carl Lee Hailey, which means that he had a temporary break
from reality. He further testified that Mr. Hailey experienced a recurrence of a dissociative
condition as a result of the trauma caused by the rape of his daughter. Dr. Bass’s testimony was
convincing enough, however, Brigance was not aware to the fact that Bass was previously
convicted of the crime statutory rape. Thus, the prosecution attorney was able to easily
discredit him as an expert witness.

Carl Lee Hailey was the last witness presented. The prosecution attorney cross-examined him
until he was able to let Carl Lee Hailey say that the men he killed deserve to die for raping his
10-year old daughter.

Dispirited, Brigance tells Carl Lee that there is little hope for an acquittal. Carl Lee replies
that he had chosen him as an attorney because even a racist jury would listen to a white
man; as "one of the bad guys," he has an influence that a black man will never have. During
closing arguments, a deeply-shaken Brigance tells the jury to close their eyes and listen to a
story. He describes, in slow and painful detail, the entire ordeal of Tonya.

BRIGANCE: “I had a great summation all worked out, full of some sharp lawyering. But I'm not
going to read it. I'm here to apologize. I am young and I am inexperienced.

But you cannot hold Carl Lee Hailey responsible for my shortcomings. You see, in all this legal
maneuvering something has gotten lost, and that something is the truth.

Now, it is incumbent upon us lawyers not to just talk about the truth, but to actually seek it, to
find it, to live it. My teacher taught me that. Let's take Dr. Bass, for example. Now, obviously I
would have never knowingly put a convicted felon on the stand -- I hope you can believe that.
But what is the truth? That he is a disgraced liar? And what if I told you that the woman he was
accused of raping was 17, he was 23, that she later became his wife, bore his child and is still
married to the man today. Does that make his testimony more or less true?
What is it in us that seeks the truth? Is it our minds or is it our hearts?

I set out to prove a black man could receive a fair trial in the south, that we are all equal in the
eyes of the law. That's not the truth, because the eyes of the law are human eyes -- yours and
mine -- and until we can see each other as equals, justice is never going to be evenhanded. It
will remain nothing more than a reflection of our own prejudices, so until that day we have a
duty under God to seek the truth, not with our eyes and not with our minds where fear and
hate turn commonality into prejudice, but with our hearts -- where we don't know better.
Now I wanna tell you a story. I'm gonna ask ya'all to close your eyes while I tell you this story. I
want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to yourselves.
This is a story about a little girl walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon. I
want you to picture this little girl.”
Suddenly a truck races up. Two men jump out and grab her. They drag her into a nearby field
and they tie her up, and they rip her clothes from her body. Now they climb on, first one then
the other, raping her, shattering everything innocent and pure -- vicious thrusts -- in a fog of
drunken breath and sweat. And when they're done, after they killed her tiny womb, murdered
any chance for her to bear children, to have life beyond her own, they decide to use her for
target practice. So they start throwing full beer cans at her. They throw 'em so hard that it tears
the flesh all the way to her bones -- and they urinate on her.
Now comes the hanging. They have a rope; they tie a noose. Imagine the noose pulling tight
around her neck and a sudden blinding jerk. She's pulled into the air and her feet and legs go
kicking and they don't find the ground. The hanging branch isn't strong enough. It snaps and
she falls back to the earth. So they pick her up, throw her in the back of the truck, and drive out
to Foggy Creek Bridge and pitch her over the edge. And she drops some 30 feet down to the
creek bottom below.
Can you see her? Her raped, beaten, broken body, soaked in their urine, soaked in their semen,
soaked in her blood -- left to die.
Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl.
NOW IMAGINE SHE'S WHITE.

After deliberation, a black child runs out of the courthouse and screams, "He's innocent!"

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