Brutal Injustice in John Grisham’s Film A Time To Kill

In the movie A Time to Kill, an adolescent girl named Tonya Hailey is brutally battered, raped, and left for dead in a small southern town by two white supremacist men; Billy Ray Cobb and James Louis Willard. As she is walking home, a car approaches; two gentlemen confront her and start kicking and punching her. Then they rape her. Not just once, but twice. She cries out, looking away, and begging them to stop. As she looks up at the heavens above for guidance, she screams for her dad. When the attack ended, the men tossed her aside in the ditch, leaving her in hopes she will die. All the citizens in the town knew of these men as drunks; people that committed crimes and broke the law, like it was ok to do. What they

This shows they are treated like animals and not as equals. TJ is considered disposable by the white men as they do not care what happens to him. Also the fact that there was no legal intervention displays how racist the community really was towards black people. In my opinion, I think Mildred Taylor included this in the novel to show that no one stood up to it even though it was unjust and unfair.

She didn't answer Atticus’s questions and then she turned on the jury (Lee 189-91). She called out the white men, calling them cowards if they did not find this man guilty. This shows corruption within the court system because of race. The jury is being told to decide on race and personal image, rather than on the facts of the case (Lee).

“Mississippi Burning” is based on the investigation of a missing persons case which turned into a murder case in Mississippi that involved three young students who were civil rights workers involved in Freedom Summer of 1964. Two of the students were Jewish and one was an African-American whom came down to Mississippi from New York City. After the students did not return home the parents pushed for media attention since the Mississippi Police were not doing any investigations. The FBI then had to get involved with the case. Little did the parents know that the police were the ones who actually committed the murder of their children. This film shows us the oppression towards African-Americans, specifically in the south.

Within the first few minutes, the film summarized the church bombing that killed four innocent young girls and explained how it affected the Civil Rights Movement all through a historic song. The first scene of the movie, each victim’s family described their daughters’ childhood and how segregation affect their family. One interesting fact was the father of Denise McClair, one of victims, actually went to school in Tuskegee. The second victim, Carole Roberston, was confused why whites and blacks could not share the same water fountain, restaurant and bathroom. She did

The motion picture begins with a riot after a white storeowner slaughters a dark young person. This episode underscores the

Imagine being persecuted your entire life. Having to constantly respect someone even though they were rude to you. This is what many African-Americans had to go through during the 1930’s. Racism is a major aspect in the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. The main character, Scout, has to deal with this problem everyday. Bob Ewell, Mr. Cunningham, and other characters are very racist, and don’t approve of Atticus defending a “Negroe”. This causes Scout to be bullied in school and even attacked by Mr. Ewell. Also, characters such as Tom Robinson are negatively affected by racism in Maycomb. Tom is killed just because of his skin color. In the novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s use of point-of-view, irony, and symbolism help to develop

This story is set in the year 1930, in Maycomb County, Alabama, and even though racism was abolished, the people still believed that colored people were bad people. Without racism still existing then, many things wouldn’t have happened. Since there was racism, a man was accused to be guilty for a crime he didn’t commit because he was black. Which allowed the actual guilty and dangerous person out on the loose, which gave him the chance to try to kill two kids. But without racism, the the guilty man would be put in jail and the whole story would be over.

balanced, realistic depictions of blacks in America The film is about a Chicago family who

justice system on the black community. The film opens with the harrowing statics spoken by

The movie that was analyzed was "The Hurricane" starring Denzel Washington. The movie was based on a true story, which was about a boxer who was wrongfully accused for murders he did not commit. Rubin Carter had been a victim of racial prejudice since the age of 11. From that time on he had been haunted by the racial prejudice that would take most of his natural life away from him. At the age of fifty he ended up going to the Supreme courts to get his trial heard and at this time he was set free. This is a short summary leaving a lot to be unsaid, but I believe the portrayal will tell most of the story in itself.

A Review and Commentary On:A Time to Kill By John GrishamA Time to Kill written by John Grisham is a book that presents the high racial tensions in Canton Mississippi in the early 1990’s. The book opens with two young men, James Lewis Willard and Billy Ray Cobb, joy riding in their brand new yellow pick up truck decked out with Confederate flags. They speed though black neighborhoods throwing full beer bottles at people and houses, until they come across ten-year-old Tonya Hailey walking home from the grocery store. The men pull over, trap her, rape her repeatedly, beat her, hang her, throw her off a bridge and leave her for dead. Her siblings find Tonya later that day, barely alive, her father, Carl Lee Hailey., and the black community

     In A Time To Kill, by John Grisham, two drunken white men violently raped, beat, and nearly killed a 10-year-old black girl named Tonya Hailey. Her father, in a clouded rage, executed the two rapists with an M-16 on their way out of the courthouse. His vigilante form of justice was not well taken by many in prejudiced Ford County, Mississippi. On the other hand, he had lots of support from the black community and from any white person whom dared to step into his shoes. A young, thirty-something lawyer named Jack Brigance was hired as his defense. He personally hoped it would give him national recognition, but his outlook turned sour when an all-white jury was drawn to decide on the fate of this Negro man. As

John Grisham's The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town is the nonfiction retelling of a 1982 case involving the rape and murder of a 21-year old cocktail waitress in Ada named Debra Sue Carter. For over five years the police were unable to solve the crime. They named Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz were eventually arrested in 1987 and charged with capital murder. In the absence of physical evidence, the prosecution's case was paper thin and relied on the testimony of less than credible characters (i.e., convicts and jailhouse snitches). Dennis Fritz was found guilty and given a life sentence. Ron Williamson was sent to death row. Both convictions were eventually overturned.

The members in the film were all caucasian males who resided in New York. They were of different ages and came from different socio-economic backgrounds. The messages used were the individual opinions and ideas regarding the case, facts and