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I very randomly watched A Time to Kill, a now mostly forgotten film that had some super-hot takes on the culture war back when it came out in 1996. Overall, I liked it a lot and thought it threw out some genuinely interesting moral considerations, but I also found the tone and message... wonky.
The premise - In the Deep South of Alabama (presumably in 1996), two drunk red neck good old boys who liberally say "nigger" and have a Confederate flag on their truck are trawling around town harassing random people. On a whim, they kidnap, rape, torture, and try to murder a 10 year old black girl. She survives, but is left with lots of injuries, including being unable to ever have children.
The rednecks are quickly arrested and everyone in town hopes they'll receive swift justice, but some people aren't so sure they will. Alabama is still considered deeply racist, and apparently a similar case a few years ago saw different perpetrators escape punishment. So the father (Samuel L. Jackson) takes matters into his own hands. While the two suspects are being marched through the local court house on the way to their trial, the father guns them down with an assault rifle, and accidentally wounds a police officer in the process.
The rest of the movie is a courtroom drama where a white lawyer (Matthew McConaughey) defends the father while the local DA (Kevin Spacey) tries to charge him with double first-degree murder. Meanwhile, the brother of one of the suspects tries to get the literal KKK to terrorize the lawyer to sabotage the defense. He's told that there is no KKK in town, but through some contacts, the brother finds the nearest Grand Wizard who then commands the brother to set up a local chapter. Throughout the trial, the KKK launches various terrorist attacks on the town and amasses 100+ members to march through the streets, and gets into violent encounters with pro-father protesters.
To get to the most interesting culture war-y part, I need to SPOIL the plot, so don't read on if you don't want to know what happens in a 25 year old movie.
The Defense mostly fucks up in the trial and it looks like the father is going to be convicted. The biggest problem for the Defense is that the jury is all white and presumed to be racist/unsympathetic. In one scene, the jurors are shown talking about the trial (illegally) the night before its conclusion, and all 12 jurors admit that they will vote guilty (one of whom even refers to the defendant as a "nigger").
Cut to the climactic closing statements of the trial. The DA gives a rousing speech about how he feels sorry for the father given what his daughter went through, but the law is the law, and you can't just murder two men in cold blood because they wronged you. Then McConaughey gives his closing statement: he recounts in gruesome detail every step of the 10 year old girl's kidnapping, torture, and rape, and concludes with... "now imagine if she was white."
The Defense wins the trial. The father is cleared of all charges and goes free. The film's narrative portrays this as an unambiguously good thing.
There's a lot to unpack here, but a few prompts:
Was 1996 Alabama really THAT racist? Would the random average white person in Alabama at that time be considered racist enough by default that they would automatically side against any black defendant? Were there enough real, true, hardcore racists that the KKK could field 100+ protesters at a big racial trial?
How differently, if at all, would such a trial be perceived today?
What is a proper punishment for the father, if any? If I had to give a verdict, I'd say he should be found guilty and sentenced to 10 years in prison, which is an extremely short sentence for a double murder and maiming of a cop, but warranted given the context. I most certainly wouldn't be comfortable with finding him not guilty, not if we want to have a functional society.
Non-culture war addendum - the movie has an insane amount of contemporary and future movie stars. There's Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin Spacey, Sandra Bullock, Ashley Judd, Donald Sutherland, Kiefer Sutherland, Kurtwood Smith, Oliver Platt, Chris Cooper, Charles Dutton, and I'm proud of myself for spotting Octavia Spencer as a literal extra.
I'm not sure that the movie is supposed to be set in 1996: the jury selection in particular only really makes sense either before Batson or in an alternate universe where it never happened.
That said, while the KKK (or connected actual-fascist networks) had lost much of their ability to bring out attendees by the mid-90s, one of the bigger offshoot's national headquarters was in Tuscarolla Alabama until they lost it in a court case in the late 1980s, and they could get 50+ members to a Northern rally as late as 1997.
If it's intended to be in the mid-1980s, it probably is trying to draw comparisons more akin to 1987, where 400 and 1000 "counterprotesters" (not all KKK, but enough to start violent fights). The aftermath of the civil suits from that era was a lot of what broke what little institutional support and administrative power remained for the KKK and other related groups.
I don't have great info on whether 1990s or 1980s white jurors would necessarily side against an African-American man regardless of the evidence in Alabama -- it's kinda overlooked but Batson did actually plea guilty and probably did do the thefts in that case -- but in a case like this one where the defendant unquestionably committed the acts I think the question of sympathy would be more relevant. (Though I am pretty skeptical that the jurors would have been as blatantly racist: it's also notable that in the original book, the "now imagine she's white" came from a juror. While Grisham made the whole story up wholesale that's what he believed what plausible for 1984.)
Preeettty heavily.
The ricochet on the police officer would be pretty conventional assault in the first degree in Alabama, a Class B Felony. There's not much specific sentencing guidelines for Alabama, but "Not less than two (2) years and not more than twenty (20) years imprisonment in the state penitentiary, including hard labor and may include a fine not to exceed $30,000." seems like a reasonable band. Given the severity of the injury (the officer loses a leg) and its forseability (the shooter had no backstop, in a crowded environment), I'd error on the higher side, but the victim's forgiveness makes me hesitant to say the highest side.
For the rapists... I've spoken about the risks of "needed killing" being a meaningful defense, but the flip side of that is that some people... well, I would be quite happy if they repent their ways and work the rest of their lives to try to pay for the evil they've done... but I'm not optimistic. I'd prefer clean cases of self-defense or defense-of-others, more significantly because they protect victims, but also for philosophical reasons. But I'm hard-pressed to believe it'd be possible for the father in this situation to have done something wrong, rather than merely not maximally laudable.
The flip side is that one of the serious dangers to vigilantism is getting it wrong. It's easy in a movie, where we 'know' what happened at the crime, but that's not how the world works. And homicide doesn't have a statute of limitations. This combination has some bad policy ramifications -- it's 'better' to try and find not-guilty a good man, and worse to try a case that risks having jeopardy attach before information shakes loose -- but I'm not sure there's a better one.
Per the novel's Wikipedia page, the events are set in 1984, two years before Batson.
...and I see that you sort of mention that with "plausible for 1984".
Yeah, apologies, should have spelled that out. The movie is based on a book published in 1989, which itself claims it was 'inspired by' a case that John Grisham had seen in 1984, though very few details or even broad strokes actually matched.
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