MovieChat Forums > A Time to Kill (1996) Discussion > The closing argument a loophole?

The closing argument a loophole?


So in the closing argument asking the jury to imagine this little girl and what she went through and to imagine her as a white girls, he's asking for them to feel the pain, right? and any of them would have done the same thing, But he wants them to set him free on an insanity plea. I think he's asking hey i know he wasn't insane but what would you have done, the closing argument was a * wink wink* more than it was explaining the insanity.

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the closing argument was a * wink wink* more than it was explaining the insanity.


No I don't think so. The crux of it is that an all white jury likely can't see how a black person could possibly be "temporarily insane", the only way he can get them to see it is to imagine she were white (which is like saying, "could be your daughter"). Most people can imagine if their own child were raped that they would go insane enough to kill the perpetrator.

So it wasn't a wink wink, it was just the only way to jar them into not seeing it terms of color but simply parent/child... and ANY parent could be driven insane enough to do the same. At least that's my take on it.




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The insanity defence went out the window after the defence expert was discredited as having been convicted of statutory rape. At the very least Jake could no longer bank on it. His only sure tactic was to appeal to the jury's sensibilities which is what he did.

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In the closing argument, he was asking the jury whether what that little girl went through would send a father insane, tying right into the insanity defence.

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Then, why did he have to conclude by "imagine if it's a white girl", extending this logic, the proper conclusion should have been "imagine if it's YOUR daughter".

The climax was played as if the "white girl" thing was the real trigger to the jury's empathy, the last card to play, but seriously, if after that heartbreaking and graphic description of what this girl went through, they still needed that final line to hang their verdict, well that doesn't say much about these people's mentalities, but I guess that's what the film tried to show from the start, even the supposedly 'good people' are racially prejudiced.

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I think you're absolutely right.
He told the entire horrific story of what happened to this little girl and then asked them to imagine her as white because he knew that this was Mississippi and as distasteful as it is to admit
for a lot of the jury imagining it happening to a white child was the only way to make them truly see just how terrible this crime was and to make them relate to it as a parent and imagine how anyone could be driven to do what Carl Lee did.
I think that's why jake gets so upset when he has to say
"now imagine she's white" because he's recognising that his home town and even himself to a degree still see black people as different and less valued.

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