Summary
Jake continues to feed his new client, Leroy Glass, information about how Bo Marsharfsky is a crook in a roundabout effort to solicit Carl Lee's case back. Carl Lee is Leroy's cellmate, and Jake knows that if he tells Leroy negative information about Marsharfsky, the information will be related to Carl Lee without directly implicating him in solicitation. Sure enough, Leroy tells Carl Lee that Marsharfsky hasn't touched his case file since he took him on as a client. A legendary Black minister and civil rights leader, Reverend Isaiah Street, also visits Carl Lee in jail. He advises Carl Lee to ditch Bo Marsharfsky for the same reasons Jake gives; Marsharfsky has a reputation in the community for representing crooks, pimps, and guilty murderers. The Reverend supports Carl Lee and worries that if he is represented by Bo Marsharfsky, the jury will consider him guilty by association.
Finally, Lester drives to town and talks to Carl Lee at the jail. He and Carl Lee get into a shouting match, and eventually Ozzie Walls calls Jake to come down to the station at Carl Lee's request. Jake enters the cell with Lester and Carl Lee as if he doesn't know why he's there. After a long, tense silence, Carl Lee asks Jake to represent him again. Jake asks Carl Lee why he wants him to represent him. Carl Lee explains that he's in a really hard situation and has never had to make these decisions before. He felt trapped by the money situation, so he chose to go with Cat's offer, but he knows that in the long run, Jake will represent him much better than Bo Marsharfsky. Finally, Jake agrees to take the case again.
Jake opens the morning's newspapers to see if his name is mentioned regarding the Hailey case; he's hoping that once the public knows he's been rehired, he can start to proudly show his face around town again. The story has not hit the news yet, but he's confident that it will before long. He suggests to Carla that she and Hanna fly to North Carolina and stay at Carla's parents' house for six weeks until the trial is over. Carla is concerned about the death threats and the Klan, but she's still unwilling to be away from Jake for six weeks. She decides to stay home and weather the storm, and Jake promises that if the case becomes too dangerous for them, he'll abandon it.
Jake goes to work, giddy with excitement at the prospect of Bo Marsharfsky and the Sullivan firm learning that he's retrieved the case. Marsharfsky calls him at his office and demands to know how he got the case back. Jake plays dumb and simply says that Carl Lee decided to go back to him on his own accord. Marsharfsky is furious and vows that he'll get the case back. Jake is delighted by Marsharfsky's reaction. Meanwhile, the Black churches of Ford County begin their collections campaign for Carl Lee's case and his family. Carl Lee is pleased that the church is offering financial support, but he's highly concerned with his daughter's health and wellbeing. The attack has naturally taken an enormous physical and psychological toll on the young girl; she has to see a specialist to further assess the physical trauma she's been through, and she cannot sleep through the night without having a night terror.
Jake puts Lucien to work finding a psychiatrist who will assess Carl Lee and declare that he was insane on the day of the shooting. Lucien quickly calls in a favor from one of his drinking buddies, a retired MD he represented in three divorce cases. Dr. W. T. Bass and Lucien get extremely drunk prior to a meeting with Jake at Lucien's house, and by the time Jake shows up, Bass is laid out on the patio, drunk and fast asleep. Although Jake is slightly disappointed with the character of the doctor Lucien finds, he will clearly provide whatever testimony they instruct him to. Deputy Looney is finally discharged from the hospital and returns home to a small party with his family and friends celebrating his wellbeing. Though he lost half of one of his legs, he will retain his badge with full salary as a dispatcher.
The Black churches of Ford County hold a press conference at Springdale Church. Representatives from chapters of the NAACP from neighboring cities show up with five-thousand-dollar checks. Reverends and leaders in the NAACP make speeches demanding justice and condemning racist institutions. When Jake sees news of the press conference, he's frustrated by the assumption that Carl Lee will hire NAACP lawyers when they've already entered into a contract twice. He wonders where the money they raise will go if Carl Lee decides to stick with him the entire way.
Despite Jake's best efforts, Judge Noose blocks him from being able to accompany Carl Lee during his state-conducted psych evaluation. Judge Noose also blocks Jake from changing the venue of the trial. So, Carl Lee heads to Whitfield, a state-run psychiatric facility for incarcerated people, in the company of Ozzie Walls and Deputy Hastings. Jake preps Carl Lee as best he can before they leave, and hope that he puts on a good show for the state doctors. They are all sure that the state doctors will claim he was perfectly sane during the attack on Cobb and Willard, but Jake is still very nervous about the evaluation.
Jake and Buckley duke it out at a preliminary hearing of Jake's motion to move the trial venue outside of Ford County. Jake also made a motion to consider a larger-than-average pool of jurors. Both motions refer to the widespread publicity of the case. At the hearing, Jake calls three witnesses to the stand to testify that a fair trial is impossible in Ford County. They are Harry Rex Vonner, Reverend Agee, and Sheriff Ozzie Walls. All three witnesses testify that it would be impossible to find an impartial juror in Ford County, and that everyone not only knows about the case, but already knows how they would vote on a jury.
Buckley embarrasses himself several times by loudly objecting to Jake's line of questioning and being promptly yelled at by Judge Noose. Buckley gathers twenty-one witnesses to testify that Carl Lee would have as fair a trial in Ford County as any other county in Mississippi, but Judge Noose's outrage that he would even suggest bringing twenty-one witnesses to a pre-trial hearing causes Buckley to reduce his witness pool to six. During a recess, Judge Noose informs Jake and Buckley that he's enacting a gag order on the case. Neither of them, nor anyone in the control of the court, is to speak to the press about the case. Both lawyers are pained by this decision, because it greatly limits their personal exposure.
Although it pains him to say no, Jake turns down the many reporters that hound him after the hearing. Three weeks out from the trial and a gag order in place, the out-of-town reporters start to filter back out of town, and life in Clanton returns to something like normal. Ethel confronts Jake about the firm's finances. She explains that they have four thousand dollars in unpaid bills, and Jake has been neglecting calls and other clients ever since he took the Hailey case. Jake loses his temper and berates Ethel. He tells her he doesn't care if she works for his firm or not. Ethel starts crying and explains that she and her husband are very scared by the threatening calls; her husband is an unhealthy man with heart problems who is prone to strokes. She worries that the stress of the trial might kill him.
Jake dismisses Ethel's concerns and tells her he will ask Walls to have more deputies check up on their house. Meanwhile, Tonya's night terrors and PTSD rule the Hailey household. Gwen and the boys do all they can to comfort Tonya and help her sleep through the night. At night, they keep every light in the house on, and deputies sleep on their couch. Gwen is down to her last fifty dollars. When she visits Carl Lee at the jail for the weekly basketball game, she tells him that they're running dangerously low on funds. Carl Lee promises to work something out. He tells her about his psych evaluation at the state facility. He said the guards there were very supportive of him, even the white ones.
Norman Reinfeld, head of NAACP's capital murder defense team, comes to Clanton to meet with Carl Lee Hailey about taking over his case. Before he meets with Carl Lee, he meets with the council of Black churches. When they share how much money they've raised thus far for Carl Lee's defense, Reinfeld is shocked at how low the number is. Reverend Agee explains that Mississippi is a very poor state, and the Black citizens are even poorer. They've managed to raise six thousand dollars locally, and the NAACP has donated $15,000 total from three different chapters. The Mississippi chapter has yet to contribute a dime to the defense fund, and Reinfeld pushes them on this, but quickly retreats when he realizes that the head of the Mississippi chapter is present, and all the reverends in the room begin verbally attacking him.
The reverends organize a meeting between Reinfeld and Carl Lee at the jail. Reinfeld insists that Jake be present at the meeting; he would like to work with existing counsel. Once they're in the room together, Jake accuses Reinfeld of chasing cases. Reinfeld explains that he works for the NAACP and goes where they are called to bring justice for Black Americans. Carl Lee chimes in and asks what will happen to all the money that has been raised if he stays with his current counsel. This makes Agee shifty. Carl Lee also brings up the fact that his family has yet to receive a dime of support from the fundraising. Agee gets defensive, and the other reverends present know that he's taken a cut from the donations himself. Carl Lee tells the reverends and Reinfeld that he will be staying with Jake's counsel.
Late one night that week, the sheriff's office gets a call from an unidentified person looking to speak to Ozzie Walls. He tells the on-duty deputy that the Klan is going to blow up Jake Brigance's home before 3 AM that same night. Sheriff Walls springs into action; he and two deputies rush over to the Brigance residence and search the premises. They then alert Jake of what is happening. They hide in the darkness and wait for suspects to emerge. A man wanders over to the porch and lays down a briefcase. The Sheriff brings him down with a nightstick and demands to know the contents of the case. He tells them its dynamite. Jake rushes Carla and Hanna out of the house and tells Carla to take a drive. The Klansman, after a swift beating from Walls, diffuses the bomb and tells them where his partners are hiding around the block.
Jake calls Carla's parents and books a flight for her and Hanna to Wilmington, NC. Carla feels betrayed by Jake because he promised he would abandon the case if it endangered their lives, and he is still pursuing it after the Klan tried to blow up their house with his family inside. After Carla leaves, Jake has lunch at Judge Noose's house. Noose tells Jake that he is not going to allow the venue to be moved. He says that he has spoken to several other judges and they all agree that, while complicated, he's within his rights to deny the motion to change venues. Jake accepts his ruling, reluctantly. Jake then goes for a long drive and buys a couple of six-packs of his favorite beer from law school, Coors. After becoming slightly buzzed, he shows up at Lucien's house, and they drink the rest of the beer together. Lucien tells Jake that his sources tell him that Buckley is applying political pressure on Judge Noose, which is why he refused to change the venue. The good-old-boy network is threatening Noose for the next election cycle, telling him that if he rules favorably in any of Brigance's motions, they'll make sure he isn't reelected.
While dealing with an enormous hangover, Jake has a visitor at his office. It's a Saturday, and he's the only one there. After ignoring their knocking for fifteen minutes, he finally calls over the balcony to see who is there. It is a law student named Ellen Roark who offers her services as a law clerk, free of charge. She comes from a criminal defense family in Boston, where her father is a famous lawyer. Her mother is from Mississippi and went to school at Ole Miss. She is confident and ambitious and has read everything the newspapers have printed about the Hailey case and Jake himself. Jake, coincidentally, is also quite attracted to her. He gives her the job.
Ellen quickly gets to work on researching similar cases while Jake takes a nap, sleeping off his bad decisions from the night before. They break for lunch at Claude's, where Jake and Ellen go head-to-head about the death penalty. Ellen believes it is a barbaric practice, Jake believes that it's not used enough. They also discuss the ACLU, which Jake seems to take great issue with. Ellen assures Jake that if he ever witnesses an execution, he will change his mind about the efficacy of the death penalty. They return to the office, where Ellen quickly begins to research a brief that Jake requests for next Monday. He would like to keep the crime scene photos away from the jury and also establish precedence for being able to talk about and describe Tonya's rape at Carl Lee's trial.
Harry Rex obtains a list of the jury selection, and he and Jake try to determine who is who on the list. Jake takes the list to Tank's Tonk, a honky-tonk six miles out of Clanton that serves Black customers. Jake gives Tank a copy of the list and asks him to determine who is Black and who, he thinks, will bring a favorable influence to the jury. The next day, several members of the Klan pay a visit to Ethel and Bud Twitty's house. Bud Twitty has suffered several heart attacks, a few major strokes, and several more minor ones. He's in fragile health. The Klansmen attack him, drag him off his porch as he is shelling butterbeans, and beat him in front of Ethel. At the hospital, Ethel screams at Jake, reminding him that he promised there was no danger to sticking with the case. Meanwhile, at the office the next day, Gwen Hailey calls Jake explaining her dire need for money. Jake tells her to come to the office with the kids, and then calls up Reverend Agee to make an appointment. He wants Gwen to get money from the church fundraiser.
The Haileys arrive at Jake's office first. When Agee arrives, he keeps his cool and doesn't betray any sense of surprise. Jake doesn't waste any time and immediately launches into his accusation. He explains to Gwen that the reverend has raised over six thousand dollars from the local Black community; this is news to Gwen, who is shocked and hurt that the reverend would withhold all of that money from her and her family that he raised in their name while they go hungry and worry about foreclosure. The reverend is able to deflect and make excuses about saving the money for Carl Lee's appeal until Ozzie and Carl Lee himself show up. This causes Agee to squirm. Carl Lee demands that Agee give the money to Gwen, and Ozzie assures Agee that if he doesn't, next Sunday he will bring Carl Lee to his church, arrest Agee, and let Carl Lee tell the whole congregation that the money they donated to help the Hailey family was being withheld from them. Agee relents and agrees to give the money to the Haileys.
That week, Black churches from all over the county and neighboring counties bus their congregations into Clanton and march around the courthouse. They hold a vigil for Carl Lee and vow to stay until he is freed. As this goes on, Jake, Harry Rex, Atcavage, Lucien, and Ellen convene in Jake's office for a "war council" type of meeting to go over the jury list. Lucien shows up an hour late with booze in hand. At first, Jake protests the drinking, but after a while, everyone is doing it. By the end of the night, they have made notes on 120 of the 140 possible jurors. Jake tells Ellen that she can sleep on the couch in the office if she's too drunk to drive back to Oxford. He also tells her to be discreet; he doesn't want any rumors flying around town about him and his new legal clerk.
Analysis
At this point in the novel, Grisham has arranged the opposing forces and exposed his readers to the major sides of the trial. We see the most, of course, of Jake Brigance and the side of the defense. Carl Lee Hailey and his family feature second-most prominently, and Grisham turns his narrative lens toward other members of the community—the prosecutor Buckley and his hired help, and minor characters like Ethel Twitty—in order to demonstrate how this one case has a ripple effect on an entire community. Grisham places a lot of emphasis on the "court of public opinion," or the idea that the media coverage of the case has as much or greater influence on its outcome than the actual defense mounted by Brigance, Marsharfsky, or the NAACP. Grisham's portrayal of the legal profession demonstrates how much of an influence the media have not only on the way the public behaves, but also on the way that the lawyers, themselves, behave. The reason Jake is so upset by Carl Lee's temporary switch to Bo Marsharfsky is because without the Hailey case, his name and face are out of the newspapers. Grisham places great emphasis, too, on Jake's motion to move the venue of the trial. Grisham depicts the hearing for the venue motion, while entirely glossing over Carl Lee's visit at the state psychiatric institution, which may seem like an experience worth recounting. Grisham's emphasis on the venue change demonstrates the importance of the theme of media and the court of public opinion, because Jake's entire argument for why the trial should be moved out of Ford County revolves around the fact that there is not a single impartial person left in Ford County due to media coverage of the case.
The situational irony of that pre-trial hearing is that by making his argument revolve around the media influence of the case, Jake prompts Judge Noose to place a gag order on everyone within the power of the court regarding the Hailey case. The gag order pains Buckley and Brigance, because they, too, are susceptible to the overwhelming influence of television media. Buckley has ambitions to run for governor of Mississippi, and he intends to milk the Hailey case for as much exposure as possible. And the long-term value of this capital murder case for Jake is not money—at least not directly—but exposure. He expects to make no more than the nine hundred dollars that Carl Lee pays him in the beginning. But he makes his case for a venue change, his motion is denied, and he loses the legal right to give public interviews.
These chapters also emphasize the pervasive corruption of the justice system. It seems that at every turn, whether it's the prosecution or the defense, those charged with upholding the law are actually engaged in subverting it or manipulating it to their own benefit. For example, when Lucien explains how the insanity testimony will come from the state, he says, “They will have one psychiatrist from Whitfield. He’ll examine the defendant for a few hours, and then drive up for trial and testify that the defendant is the sanest man he’s ever met. He’s never seen a legally insane defendant. To him no one is insane. Everybody’s blessed with perfect mental health. Whitfield is full of sane people, except when it applies for government money, then half the state’s crazy. He’d get fired if he started saying defendants are legally insane” (214). Jake has never used the insanity defense before, so he is new to the methods and processes of establishing it. Knowing now that he's up against a corrupt medical institution that will unequivocally maintain that Carl Lee was sane the day of the shooting, he needs to find a doctor who will say whatever he wants, according to Lucien. Lucien's employs his doctor friend, W.T. Bass, whose alcoholism is a main feature of his character. Lucien says of Dr. Bass, "he peddles a little dope, but only to a rich clientele. Not really dope, but narcotics which he can legally prescribe. It’s not really illegal; just a little unethical" (216). The novel certainly does not spare Jake or make him an exception to a corrupt system. In fact, he's portrayed as very much part of the problem. His association with crooks like Harry Rex Vonner and his reliance on unethical methods not only condemns him, but in the context of his role in A Time to Kill, seems to suggest a broader corruption in the fabric of the judicial system.
