A time to kill -Nick Baumann

What Carl Lee Haley does is justice. The two red-necks who raped his daughter were going to be brought to justice, one way or the other. By law they would have served the maximum amount of time in jail, or the death penalty. Carl Lee Haley takes it upon himself to do the work of an inevitable execution. He commits the crime out of vengeance for his daughter. Infuriated with the situation, he takes out his anger on the men who committed this foul act on his young daughter. Carl Lee Haley's punishment should be a medium amount of jail time, if any, because, although he commits double murder, it is partially justified what the men had done to his daughter. They had taken away her ability to reproduce and continue his family name, something that any parent would be devastated over. No, the scales of justice could not be more unbalanced where the story takes place. In the South, there is a heightened amount of racism and hate towards African Americans, and that is why the jury was hesitant to allow Carl Lee to be deemed innocent. It should not matter whether Tanya Haley is black, but sadly it does, especially where the story takes place. The jury and the town did not sympathize as much for Tanya, as they would have for her if she had been white. More people of the town would have sided with Carl and his family, if they had been white. Due process for Carl is slowed and he is forced to be held in a cell far longer than any person should. This ties back to racism and that if Carl would have been white a different path of due process would have been taken, most likely a faster trial and hearing.