Close Your Eyes - Part 1

Remember the movie “A Time to Kill” (1996) with Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey? The movie was set in 1984 Mississippi - the Deep South. Samuel Jackson was on trial for killing the men who raped and attempted to murder his daughter. Matthew McConaughey was a young, white lawyer defending Samuel Jackson. On the surface you might say, so what does this have to do with anything? It was just a movie. You are wrong. It was far, far more than just a movie.

Matthew McConaughey won the case and Samuel Jackson was vindicated because of McConaughey’s powerful closing argument. McConaughey told the jurors to “close your eyes” and keep them closed. He then began to tell them a story. In the story, a young 12-year-old girl was walking down the road to her house. A truck pulls up with two men in it. They take the 12-year-old girl and rape her repeatedly. The attack was so brutal it ruptured the child’s uterus and she would never be able to have kids. They then tied the child to the truck and dragged the child through gravel and dirt for miles. This tore some of the skin and flesh from her body. They then picked the child up, threw her in the back of the pickup truck, and urinated on her with her flesh torn and bloodied. Finally, the men delivered the final blow in what they thought would surely kill this little girl, throwing her down an embankment of about 10 feet onto rocks and a riverbed. However, the child lived.

At the end of the story, McConaughey said, “I want you, with your eyes still closed, to imagine this horrifying crime. Now imagine this child as a WHITE child.” There was not a dry eye in the courtroom and this was a powerful, powerful argument. -- To be continued...