A Time To Kill

Some of the most important decisions in our lives are based on the values that our families and surrounding community impose on us. To make a difficult decision, especially about someone else’s future we have to put ourselves in the other persons shoe’s. I believe in the movie “A Time to Kill” , Jake the lawyer’s closing argument would have allowed me to put myself in the shoes of the father of the girl that was rapped. I think the big contradiction in this case was the fact that the two boys that rapped the girl where white, and the girl they rapped was black. And at this point in time especially in the southern states racism was a really big issue. So this instantly put Carl in a bad position just due to the fact that he was the minority. I believe that Carl’s statement would have made an impact on my final decision in I were in the jury.

He starts off by telling everyone in the courtroom to close their eyes and visualize the words that he was saying. This helped to put everyone in the courtroom in the state of mind that Carl was in. Also when stating his argument he didn’t used any world that would describe the victims nationally. He used neutral words such as the little girl instead on the black girl. Along with the changing the court rooms mode of thinking, he also used very vivid detail to grasp the audience attention and make them picture what the little girl went thought. He also stated step by step the crimes the boys committed, and this helps to show what the little girl went thought that day

I feel that the tactic that Jake used was a ethical choice and I would have done the same thing if put in his shoes. He realized that the majority of the jury and audience would be white so he had to find a creative and unique way to convince everyone that the color of the victim doesn’t matter. He also had to show that anyone in that room