This movie is based in a southern Mississippi town where racial tension runs high through out the community.

The plot begins with 10-year old, black girl, Tonya Hailey, one of the many children of a poor black man Carl Lee Hailey (Samuel L. Jackson), being raped and beaten and hung from a tree and left to die by two young intoxicated white men.

Carl Lee, the father of the victim, takes the law into his own hands and shoots to death the pair of men in front of dozens of witnesses in the Canton, Mississippi courthouse just before the two men were to go on trial.

Earlier, Carl Lee had also approached his friend Jake Brigance (McConaughey), a young white struggling lawyer, and asked for Jake’s help in case he gets in trouble. In other words he was indirectly forewarning Jake of his intentions to kill the men.

The rest of the movie follows the trial of Carl Lee,

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