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1-Page Summary of A Time To Kill
Overall Summary
John Grisham’s 1988 novel A Time to Kill is about Jake Brigance, a lawyer in Mississippi who defends Carl Lee Hailey for killing two men. The story takes place during the 1980s and explores themes of racism, intolerance, and revenge.
In the beginning of the novel, two white men named Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Willard kidnap a ten-year old black girl named Tonya Hailey. They rape her and throw her off a bridge to see if she can survive. She survives, so they’re caught by Sheriff Ozzie Walls who’s also black. Carl Lee Hailey is Tonya’s father; he gets revenge on the rapists by killing them with an M16 rifle that was illegally obtained.
A 32-year old white lawyer named Jake Brigance agrees to represent Carl Lee, a black man who shot and killed two men who raped his daughter. The odds of winning the case are low because it is in Mississippi. However, Jake wants to win the case so he can become famous through media coverage. He hires some lawyers from an organization called NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People), but Carl Lee decides to stick with him as his attorney.
Soon after Carl Lee is arrested, he and his family begin to receive threatening phone calls. The threats eventually escalate into violence when the KKK forms a new chapter in Ford County. One night dynamite is placed beneath Jake’s bedroom window, but it’s only thanks to an anonymous tip that Ozzie warns him in time. Jake sends his wife and daughter away until the trial ends.
The tension between blacks and the Ku Klux Klan continues to escalate. They regularly protest outside of the courthouse, where one day a riot erupts when a firebomb is thrown at Grand Dragon Stump Sisson. His robe catches on fire, and he later dies from his injuries. The National Guard is summoned to keep peace in town. In retaliation for what happened to Stump, the Klan burns down Jake’s house and then abducts Ellen, Jake’s legal aide who was helping him with his case against them. She gets beaten up by them but survives it all; however, they shoot her boyfriend Peter instead of her because they missed their intended target (Jake). He ends up paralyzed as a result of being shot in the back by an arrow that hit him while standing next to Ellen during this attack.
Jake’s trial strategy is to claim that Carl Lee was insane at the time of the shooting. However, Jake begins to believe he will lose the case when a psychiatrist who testifies for him has been charged with statutory rape in his past. During deliberation, the jury deadlocks for several days and eventually returns a verdict of not guilty after one juror asks if they would kill someone if their daughter were raped and everyone answers yes. Jake earns only $900 for this case but is thrilled with winning it because it will lead to more success.
Critics liked A Time to Kill. It was written by a lawyer who practiced law for ten years, and it shows because the legal scenes are authentic and accurate. It later became a movie that also received positive reviews.
Chapter 1
In a small town, a man named Billy Ray Cobb is selling drugs after getting out of prison. He’s sitting on the tailgate of his truck while watching his friend Willard rape Tonya Hailey. Willard is four years older and works for Cobb occasionally as well as raping her. She is 10 years old and was walking home when they attacked her; she passed out before seeing them hit her in the head with a beer can. The men hear a car coming down the highway and throw her into the back of their truck to hide from it. They decide to move quickly so they won’t get caught by whoever’s coming down that road, but first take off their clothes because people might think there were three men if they see two pairs of pants hanging over something at another location later on (they’re planning on killing someone else).
