Examples Of Ethical Issues In Time To Kill

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Recommended: Depiction of blacks in films

There are a few moral issues I think the movie hits on, one is the issue of racism. The second issue is was the father justified in shooting the rapists for what they did to his daughter. The first ethical issue in the movie is when the father decides to take action and shoot the men that raped his daughter. He didn’t believe that the legal system would convict the rapists because they were white, so he took the law into his own hands. This was an easy decision for Carl Lee after his lawyer told him of a case in which two white men raped a young black girl in another county and were cleared of the charges by an all-white jury. The father took matters into his own hands by killing the men that raped his daughter. I think what Carl Lee did follows one of our basic instincts that when someone hurts us or someone we love, we want revenge. We believe in an eye for an eye, make them feel how we felt. …show more content…

The all-white jury is challenged with putting their prejudices aside and fairly hearing a case and deciding the guilt or innocence of a black man. At first, the issue is portrayed as an extremely easy decision for the majority of the jury members throughout the movie as they voted each night at a restaurant dinner table. After listening to an emotional closing argument by Carl Lee’s lawyer, in which he told the story in detail of a young 10-year-old girl, who while walking home from the store was brutally beaten, raped, hung and dumped…left for dead. Finally, to the jury he said “now imagine she’s white”. The jury members now come face to face with a moral dilemma. This forces the jury members to imagine what state of mind they would be in if the men had raped one of their own children. This proves effective as the jury then decides to consider the defendant legally insane at the time of the murders and clear him of the

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