In the movie A Time To Kill, a man, Carl Lee Harper, is tried for the murder of two men in broad daylight. While the movie shows Carl Lee bursting out of a closet, that he presumably stayed in overnight, and shooting the two men on their way to court in front of many witnesses, he is found not guilty (ATTK 18:27-19:37). Although seemingly clear cut, the trial is complicated by the motive of his action. Carl Lee was taking the law into his own hands by shooting the two men. These men had raped and left his daughter to die. Although she survived, she would no longer be able to have children and was left very injured still. In the setting of the crime, the two men convicted for this assault were not unlikely to go free or get off with minimal punishment. For this reason, Carl Lee felt the need to hide in a closet and shoot these two men. By appealing to the pathos of the jury, Jake, Carl Lee’s attorney was able to set his client free.
Jake makes the jury feel empathetic toward Carl Lee in his concluding statement. Right when it looked like Jake was going to lose the case, Carl Lee explains that he chose Jake as his attorney because Jake is “a bad guy” like the jury (ATTK 2:10:51-2:10:53). Jake still sees in black and white similar to how the jury sees yet is able to understand Carl Lee’s actions as he is also a father. This helps Jake realize he could only convince them of Carl Lee’s innocence, or at least justify his actions, by figuring out why he himself felt that Carl Lee should go free. The reason? He would have done the same if he was in Carl Lee’s position (ATTK 2:07:45-2:08:07). His only hope to get Carl Lee set free, was to trust that the jury would feel the same way. He designs a concluding speech with the intention to evoke feelings that allow the jury to understand the actions of his client. Jake does this by telling a story, using the imagination of the jury to put them in the shoes of Carl Lee. Then to really make them feel empathetic toward Carl Lee, he asks them to imagine that the little girl in the story who got raped is white (ATTK 2:20:21).
The reactions of the jury show that they felt the emotion Jake was intending them to feel. The women in the jury were weeping while the men looked disturbed (ATTK 2:18:00-2:20:21). This was a clear indication that the jurors were not just sympathizing but genuinely feeling how Carl Lee felt. By asking the jury to imagine that the little girl was white, he was attempting to make them feel how they would feel if they were in the same situation rather than merely feeling sorry for Carl Lee’s position. This affective empathy invoked by Jake’s speech is not uncommon in the practice of law (Hoffman 231). In this instance, it was successful in overcoming racial prejudice to the extent that a black man who clearly committed a vicious crime was exonerated.
Work Cited:
A Time to Kill. Dir. Joel Schumacher. Regency Enterprises, Warner Bros, 1996. digital campus. Web. 20 September 2017
Martin L. Hoffman. Empathy: Philosophical and Psychological Perspectives. Oxford University Press 2011