The movie begins in a small town called Canton, (Mississippi) where it is very obvious there is a separation between blacks and whites. Tonya Hailey is a little ten-year-old black girl, who is on her way home from the grocery store. A truck pulls up with two white men, James Louis “Pete” Willard and Billy Ray Cobb, who viciously attack and rape this little girl. After attempted murder, this girl survived and made her way home, and the two men were found at a bar and were arrested. Carl Lee Hailey, Tonya’s father, obviously enraged, is full of emotions and nervous these two men may be acquitted, despite what they’ve done. Full of rage, Carl Lee storms in while Pete and Billy Ray are being escorted into court by deputy Dwayne Powell Looney, rifle in hand, and kills the two men, accidentally shooting the deputy in the leg from cross fire. Carl Lee is arrested and chooses Jake Tyler Brigance to be his lawyer. However, this case turns into more of an issue than any one of them would have suspected. The KKK, a group of racist white men, becomes involved. The KKK get involved in numerous ways, by lighting wooden crosses on fire, one of which lights Jake Brigance’s house on fire, also by attacking Jake’s secretary, Ethel Twitty and her husband, Bud, ending in his death, and Ellen Roark, a law student who’s helping Jake with the trial, gets abducted and left for dead. All this occurs when the trial is going on, including a riot between the KKK and a group of African-Americans. A fairly obvious underlying theme throughout the movie is the attempt to get a black man a fair trial in Mississippi. D.A. Rufus Buckley is the defense attorney, is the sneaky and intelligent lawyer working in contrast to Jake. Throughout the questioning of numerous people (police men, family of the deceased, doctors, etc.) the case ends with Jake making an impressive yet devastating speech, having everyone in the court room close their eyes and imagine Tonya and…
