The movie begins with a rape scene that you may have heard about. What makes this scene shocking is that a 10 year old girl is being raped. While walking up a stair case for the preliminary trail the two men captured is killed by the girls father Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson). Now you would think normally a distraught father would count on the judicial system. Carl and his daughter are black and the assailants are white as all these events are taking place in the south. Inflamed by the situation, the KKK (led by Kiefer Sutherland) becomes active again. Hailey chooses lawyer Jake Brigance (Matthew McConaughey) to oversee his case and it looks like Carl is going to be found guilty and Jake’s career will come to an end.
Ethical Dilemmas…show more content… Should he let the legal system provide justice or take the law into his own hands? This more or less was an easy decision because of a similar case in a neighboring county and the men were cleared of all charges a year earlier, those men however where white. To resolve this issue, Carl took the law into his own hands and murdered the two accused of raping his girl.
Carl could have sought out Jake for guidance first, but at that point Carl was thinking of doing something drastic. Jake would have had the opportunity to convince Carl to trust the legal system and ensure him the prosecution of the two men, seeking the maximum sentence. The previous trail indicated justice would not be served in this trail. Now murdering these men is wrong in the eyes of many, to include the legal system, I do think I would have been strong enough to allow the legal system do its job. However, Carl Lee did the community a favor by getting these criminals of the