No one was charged with these murders until 2005 even though suspects had been implicated shortly after the deaths. The civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were brutally murdered in 1964.
The suspect was finally convicted during 1994. The evidence pointed to the guilt of the primary suspect however, two all-White juries deadlocked on his guilt. Medgar Evers, a civil rights pioneer, was killed in Mississippi during 1963. An all-White jury exonerated the suspects of the 1955 murder of Emmett Till in about one hour even though the evidence established their likely involvement in the murder. Five very high-profile real life murders during this era reflected the impossibility of Finch’s task.
Civil right issues a time to kill movie movie#
However, the movie would have less emblematic of the times if the jury had acquitted Robinson. Hence, Professor Blinka was correct that Finch lost the case. Notwithstanding the evidence, the all-White jury convicted Robinson. Rather, the facts indicated that the alleged victim’s father had physically assaulted her after witnessing her kissing Robinson. The evidence clearly established that Robinson had not committed any crime against the alleged victim. The movie starred Gregory Peck as attorney Atticus Finch who represented an African American man, Tom Robinson, who was wrongfully accused of raping a White woman in a southern Mississippi town.
Justice, particularly in the south, was not meted out in a colorblind manner. The movie depicted the era of southern lynchings, Jim Crow laws and the civil rights movement. I disagree with my esteemed colleague Professor Daniel Blinka’s recent blog that he’d “rather leave the planet than read or watch To Kill a Mockingbird – Finch loses the big case and gets his client killed nice job!” I just watched the movie again for about the 50th time! The movie was clearly a fiction, but it symbolized for me a cultural acknowledgement of an ugly chapter in our history where racism interfered with an equitable disbursement of justice. The movie is an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee. One of my favorite legal movies is To Kill a Mockingbird.
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