A Time to Kill 🎥 1996 Movie Info

Plot Summary

In Canton, Mississippi, ten-year-old African American girl Tonya Hailey is abducted, raped, and beaten by two local white men, Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Willard, while on her way home from getting groceries. The duo dump her in a nearby river after a failed attempt to hang her. Tonya survives, and Sheriff Ozzie Walls arrests Cobb and Willard. Tonya’s father, Carl Lee Hailey, contacts Jake Brigance, a white lawyer who previously defended his brother Lester. Jake admits the possibility that the rapists will walk free, so Carl Lee goes to the county courthouse and opens fire with an automatic rifle, killing both rapists and unintentionally wounding Deputy Dwayne Looney, whose leg has to be amputated. Carl Lee is arrested, and Jake agrees to defend him.

As the rape and subsequent revenge killing gain national media attention, DA Rufus Buckley decides to take the case in hopes of furthering his political career. He seeks the death penalty, and presiding Judge Omar Noose denies Jake a change of venue to a more ethnically diverse county. So, Carl Lee will likely face an all-white jury. Brigance seeks help from his defense team: law student Ellen Roark, close friend Harry Rex Vonner, and former mentor and longtime activist Lucien Wilbanks, a once-great civil rights lawyer.

Meanwhile, Billy Ray’s brother Freddie Lee Cobb plans to avenge Billy’s death by joining and enlisting the help of the Mississippi branch of the Ku Klux Klan and its Grand Dragon, Stump Sisson, to ensure Carl Lee’s conviction and death sentence by any means necessary. On the first day of the trial, the Klan takes to the streets and rallies, only to be outnumbered by counter-protesters consisting of the area’s minority residents as well as white locals who support Carl Lee’s acquittal. The protest erupts into a violent brawl that results in dozens of injuries and Sisson’s death.

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