A Time to Kill (Jake Brigance, #1)

by John Grisham

“He’s laughin’ about it, Sheriff. It’s a big joke. Said he finally found a nigger who was a virgin. Somebody asked how old she was, and Cobb said eight or nine. Everybody laughed.”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what I’d do.” “Lemme ask you this. If it was your little girl, and if it was two niggers, and you could get your hands on them, what would you do?” “Kill them.”

and wiping her eyes. She spoke and her voice cracked. “She’ll never have kids. He told me …” She stopped, wiped her face and tried to continue. She began sobbing loudly, and buried her face in a paper towel.

Before they died, they met his little girl, only briefly, and within two hours wrecked her little body and ruined her mind. So brutal was their attack that she could never have children; so violent the encounter that she now saw them hiding for her, waiting in closets.

“I think children have a right not to be raped,

I think little girls are special, and if mine was tied to a tree and gang raped by two dopeheads I’m sure it would make me crazy. I think good and decent fathers should have a constitutional right to execute any pervert who touches their children.

She needs him now, as much as she needed him then. Please don’t take him away. She waits on the front row for her daddy. Let him go home to his family.

“As to each count of the indictment, we the jury find the defendant not guilty by reason of insanity.”

“Mr. Hailey, you have been tried by a jury of your peers and found not guilty. I do not recall any expert testimony that you are now dangerous or in need of further psychiatric treatment. You are a free man.”