A Time to Kill Media v. Reality of Law and Justice: A Time to Kill What is it in us that seeks the truth?

Is it our minds, or is it our hearts (Grisham & Schumacher, 1996)? This quote from Matthew McConaugheys character, hot shot lawyer Jake,

spoke volumes in a silenced courtroom full of blacks and whites anxiously waiting for the jurys verdict. Jake was defending a black man, Carl Lee, who was accused of point-blank murdering the two men who raped his ten year old daughter in Canton, Mississippi in the 1990s. Jake took the case to set out to prove that a black man could have a fair trial in the South, despite evident racial disparities. As the movie comes to a close, it appeared that Carl Lee and Jake were going to lose. That is until Jake asked the courtroom what it is inside us that seeks the truth. In Carl Lees eyes, it is his heart that sought the truth. He took the law into his own hands and killed the men who were about to be set free after maliciously raping his daughter. Carl Lees prosecutors, on the other hand, sought justice with their minds. In their eyes, a man cannot take the law into his own hands to seek his justice. We have a duty under God to seek the truth. Not with our eyes, not with our minds with fear and hate that turn commonality into prejudice, but with our hearts (Grisham & Schumacher, 1996). In the end, the jurors, who had already had their minds made up prior to the final court date, have a change of heart and find Carl Lee innocent. After watching A Time to Kill, I thought I would compare the movie to chapter two in our book, which deals with justice and the law. According to Walsh and Hemmens (2008), justice is one of those great intangibles like truth, beauty, and love, all recognizable as we experience them in their particular manifestation, but awkward to define (p 28). In other words, we all know what justice entails, yet we all have a slightly different definition of the term. In Aristotles eyes,

A Time to Kill justice meant treating equals equally (those who follow the law) and unequals unequally, those

who do not follow the law (Walsh & Hemmens, 2008). Walsh and Hemmens (2008) continue to further describe justice as how we behave toward and treat others, and how decisions about what type of behavior and treatment is appropriate given our perceptions about what others deserve (p 28). In comparison to A Time to Kill, Carl Lee takes our books definition to a whole new level. He believed death was a fitting punishment for raping his innocent ten year old girl and that the two men got what they rightfully deserved. And personally, I cannot say I would not want to do the same thing. However, the white community in Mississippi thought if Carl Lee could point-blankly kill two men who were unarmed, than he himself deserved to be killed. In the end Jake hit home in his closing argument by asking the jurors to imagine a little girl going through the rape Carl Lees daughter went through. He then asked the jurors to envision the little girl as a white girl. The jurors saw what I saw, and what the black community in the South saw. It did not matter what race or religion she was; the two men took advantage of her and deep down in our hearts we believe they got what they deserved. As far as what I have learned in class thus far, in reality I do not think Carl Lees trial would have had the same outcome as it did in the movie. Although the men who raped his little girl were white trash and would not be missed, that still does not give Carl Lee a one way ticket to get off free of killing two men. I do not think society would allow a murderer to go free this day in age. But unlike the movie, I do not think his sentence would be the death penalty. I believe he would be allowed to serve less than life in prison due to the fact that he killed in spite of his daughters rape. With all facts set aside, one thing will always remain the same: the eyes of the law are humanized yours and mine. And until we can see each other as equals, justice is never going to be even handed (Grisham & Schumacher, 1996).

A Time to Kill References Grisham, J. (Producer), Lowry, H. (Producer), Milchan, A. (Producer), Nathanson, M. (Producer), & Schuamacher, J. (Director). (1996). A Time to Kill [Motion Picture]. United States: Warner Bros. Pictures. Walsh, A. & Hemmens, C. (2008). Law, justice, and society: A sociolegal introduction. New York. Oxford University Press.