• Assignment: First, read the synopsis (summary) of the story, “A Time To Kill.” Second, read the CLOSING ARGUMENT from “A Time to Kill”(below).
  • Third, re-read Atticus’s closing argument to the jury in Tom Robinson’s trial.
  • Finally, in a paragraph (using MLA Format) state which speech you think is more effective: Jake’s or Atticus’s?
  • You must give three reasons to support your opinion. Follow the directions at the bottom.

The following is an excerpt from the script from the 1996 drama “A Time to Kill,” starring Matthew McConnahey, Samuel L. Jackson, and Sandra Bullock.
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SYNOPSIS: Settin is Canton, Mississippi – in “modern day.”

10-year-old Tonya Hailey is viciously brutalized by two white racist rednecks -- James Louis "Pete" Willard and Billy Ray Cobb.

Almost immediately after Tonya is found and rushed to a hospital, 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 (Tonya’s father) is determined to NOT let that happen in this case involving his daughter.

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.

He kills Pete and Billy Ray for what they did to Tonya. Lawyer Jake Brigance and his assistant must defend Carl Lee. The trial is being held in the deep South. There has been a reappearance of the Ku Klux Klan. The following is Jake’s SUMMATION, or closing argument.

“A Time To Kill” JAKE (defense attorney):
I want to tell you a story. I'm going to ask you all to close your eyes while I tell you the story. I want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to yourselves. Go ahead. Close your eyes, please. 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 with a vicious thrust in a fog of drunken breath and sweat. And when they're done, after they've killed her tiny womb, murdered any chance for her to have children, to have life beyond her own, they decide to use her for target practice. They start throwing full beer cans at her. They throw them so hard that it tears the flesh all the way to her bones. Then they urinate on her.

Now comes the hanging. They have a rope. They tie a noose. Imagine the noose going tight around her neck and with a sudden blinding jerk she's pulled into the air and her feet and legs go kicking. 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. Pitch her over the edge. And she drops some thirty 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.

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Your assignment is to type a paragraph (6-8) sentences explaining which closing argument you think was more effective, Jake Brigance’s, or Atticus Finch’s. You must include THREE REASONS to support your opinion. The success or failure of the verdict cannot be one of the reasons.