Going down a back road, carrying groceries for her mother, Tonya Hailey walked toward her home. All of a sudden she feels a sharp pain in the back of her head, falls to the ground unconscious, and is dragged to the back of a yellow pick-up truck. Hailey woke up with her hands tied to a tree, and two legs spread apart and tied to separate fence posts. She smelled beer and liquor on the two men who were tying her up. She cried for her daddy, but he could not be there for her. The two men take turns raping her, ignoring the fact that she is bleeding. When they have finished, they spit on her, they cuss her, and they urinate on her. Thinking they will get rid of her, they dump her in a near by river, hoping and believing she will drown. But she does not drown; she lives, and she is found.
This is a preview to the beginning of the book I read "A Time to Kill. This book is about a black girl who was raped by two white men. The white men are found guilty, but even so, the girl's father, Carl Lee Hailey, kills them both. .
After the two white men, Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Willard, have been tried in court, they are walking out, handcuffed, and the angry father who seeks revenge runs from a janitor's closet and shoots them both. They die almost instantly. .
Obviously, Carl Lee Hailey will be taken to jail. His kids and wife are left at home to fend for themselves. His wife had no job and could not imagine how she would get along with no money and no husband to provide for her family. She is scared, and because of Tonya's hospital bills, they are even more so in debt then ever. Carl Lee remained in jail.
Before Carl Lee killed the two white men, he consulted a lawyer friend that he knew named Jake Brigance. Jake is an average lawyer in a small town. He is white, unlike Carl Lee, and although he realized how angry Carl Lee was, he did not figure that he would do something crazy like kill the two men.