Summary
From a curbside, Scout, Jem, and Dill watch most Maycomb residents head toward the courthouse for Tom’s trial. The children have asked to stay home for the day, but Jem can’t resist the temptation of the “most excitin’ thing that ever happened in this town!” and races to the courthouse, with Scout and Dill following close behind.
When the children arrive, the downstairs section of the courtroom is packed with spectators, so the elderly Black minister Reverend Sykes generously allows Scout, Jem, and Dill to join the Black audience on the balcony (the “colored” section). As the audience gets situated, the camera reveals Tom and Mayella—their first onscreen appearances in the entire film—as well as the jury members: white male farm folk.
The trial begins. The lengthy courtroom sequence consists of four cross-examinations: Sheriff Tate, Mr. Ewell, Mayella, and Tom. First is Tate, who gives his testimony to the circuit solicitor, Mr. Gilmer. Tate testifies that on the evening of August 21, Bob Ewell visited his office and alerted him of the rape of his daughter. Tate raced to the Ewell household as fast as he could, only to discover a badly beaten up Mayella. Tate claims to have asked Mayella if Tom took advantage of her, and Mayella said, “Yes, he did.”
Atticus then asks Tate some questions: if a doctor was called on the night of the alleged incident. Tate says no, explaining that he didn’t think it was necessary, despite the obvious physical evidence of the attack on Mayella’s body—he claims, “She was beaten around the head. There were bruises already coming on her arms. She had a black eye starting...it was her left [eye].” After Atticus asks for clarification, Tate corrects himself and claims it was actually Mayella’s right eye, and entire right side of her face, that was severely beaten. Judge Taylor then asks Tate to be seated.
Next, Mr. Ewell comes up to the stand and gives his account of what happened on August 21st: late that night, he retrieved kindling from the woods and heard Mayella screaming on his walk home. Once he approached the window, he found Tom on top of Mayella and tried to get inside, but Tom quickly fled the house. Ewell then fetched Tate.
Atticus then rises for Ewell’s cross-examination. He asks why Ewell didn’t call for a doctor; Ewell responds, “There wasn’t no need to. I seen who done it.” Atticus also asks Ewell if he can read and write and hands Ewell paper and paper to write his name. Ewell struggles to write legibly, and reveals himself to be left-handed. Outraged, Ewell laments, “That Atticus Finch is tryin' to take advantage of me. You gotta watch lawyers like Atticus Finch” to the judge before sitting back down. Scout, Dill, and Jem each intently watch Ewell’s histrionics from the balcony.
Mayella’s testimony comes next; she asserts that she invited Tom to “bust up” an old chiffarobe in her yard for nickel. When she went inside to retrieve the nickel, Tom suddenly attacked her, hitting her “again and again” with his hands around her neck.
During cross-examination, Mayella discusses her father, who is usually “tol’able” when he is not drinking. She states that Ewell has never abused her but implies that he is very well capable when he’s “riled.” She also expresses uncertainty over the first time she ever invited Tom inside her home. Mayella also can’t at first confirm if Tom hit her, but she soon defensively changes her mind. Atticus then asks Tom to stand up and catch a water glass; he catches it with his right hand. When asked to catch the glass with his other (left) hand, Tom says he cannot, asserting, “I can't use my left hand at all. I got it caught in a cotton gin when I was twelve years old. All my muscles were tore loose.” The crowd begins to murmur to themselves.
The rest of Mayella’s statements are confusing and contradictory; she is obviously lying. Atticus challenges her testimony, pointedly asking, "Do you want to tell us what really happened?" Mayella then shouts at Tom and the jury (“He took advantage of me. An' if you fine, fancy gentlemen ain't gonna do nothin' about it, then you're just a bunch of lousy, yella, stinkin' cowards, the—the whole bunch of ya, and your fancy airs don't come to nothin'”) and runs from the witness in hopes of obtaining sympathy from the crowd.
Finally, Tom shares his testimony, which contradicts Mayella’s false story. He expands on his and Mayella’s relationship—for about a year, he passed the Ewell property going to and from the field every day, and Mayella would frequently invite him inside the fence to do small chores and errands for her, free of charge. On the night of August 21st, Mayella asked Tom to fix a door inside the small house. Tom noticed the house’s unusual silence with the seven Ewell children in town for ice cream, using the nickels Mayella saved for over a year.
As Tom continues the next bit of his testimony, he breaks out into a nervous sweat. He told Mayella that he “best be goin’” but Mayella convinced him to examine and receive a box from a chiffarobe. Mayella then grabbed him around the legs and eventually attempted to seduce Tom with hugs and kisses (“she said she'd never kissed a grown man before an' she might as well kiss me. She says for me to kiss her back”). Tom tried to reject her advances and leave, but her father spotted her from the window and “said he’s gonna kill her.” After he finishes his story, Atticus bluntly asks him, “Tom, did you rape Mayella Ewell?” With tears in his eyes, Tom replies, “I did not, sir” and denies harming Mayella in any way.
Mr. Gilmer then begins his cross-examination of Tom. He emphasizes Tom’s strength and uses his kindling and picking-up-chiffarobe skills to establish that he is “strong enough to choke the breath out of a woman and sling her to the floor.” Trying to have Tom admit to some ulterior motive, Mr. Gilmer also asks, “How come you’re so all-fired anxious to do that woman’s chores?” Tom somewhat unwisely states that the lonely Mayella had nobody to help her—“I felt right sorry for her. She seemed…” He realizes his mistake and doesn’t complete his sentence; Mr Gilmer interjects: “You felt sorry for her? A white woman? You felt sorry for her?”
Time passes, and Atticus delivers a passionate final defense summation of Tom to the jury. He first claims that the case “should never have come to trial,” due to the lack of medical evidence proving “the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place.” Instead, the State unfairly relied on the dubious and contradictory testimonies of two witnesses. Atticus asserts that Mayella was brutally attacked by someone who strongly led with their left hand, which refutes Tom from being a real suspect of the crime, as his left hand was claimed useless in his testimony.
Atticus then declares his pity toward Mayella, “a victim of cruel poverty and ignorance” while condemning her decision to put a man’s life at stake to rid herself of her own guilt. Atticus believes Mayella’s sense of shame for attempting to seduce a black man—at the time an unspeakable offense—was her main motivation for the entire case, stating, “She must destroy the evidence of her offense. But what was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson—a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was to her, a daily reminder of what she did. Now what did she do? She tempted a Negro. She was white, and she tempted a Negro. She did something that in our society is unspeakable. She kissed a black man. Not an old uncle, but a strong, young Negro man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards.” Atticus’s central argument is convincing: Mayella tried to make sexual advances toward Tom, and when her father beat her thereafter, she ignorantly accused Tom of rape.
Atticus then looks at the jury and urges them to break their racist preconceptions of Black Americans: “Confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption, the evil assumption, that all Negros lie, that all Negroes are basically immoral beings, all Negro men are not to be trusted around our women. An assumption that one associates with minds of their caliber, and which is in itself, gentlemen, a lie, which I do not need to point out to you. And so, a quiet, humble, respectable Negro, who has had the unmitigated temerity to feel sorry for a white woman, has had to put his word against two white people. The defendant is not guilty, but somebody in this courtroom is.” His final appeal to jury underlines his firm belief in equality and the integrity of the American justice system: “Now gentlemen, in this country, our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system. That's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality. Now I am confident that you gentlemen will review—without passion—the evidence that you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this man to his family. In the name of God, do your duty. In the name of God, believe Tom Robinson.”
After hours of deliberation, the jury re-enters the courtroom and pronounces Tom guilty. The attendees of the trial begin to whisper among themselves, Jem disappointingly buries his head on the rail of the balcony, and Scout looks puzzled. The judge dismisses the jury, and people begin to exit the courtroom. Tom appears shocked, and Atticus reassures him that they will appeal the verdict ("I'll go to see Helen first thing in the morning. I told her not to be disappointed, we'd probably lose this time”). As the courtroom empties, all the Black attendees stand up to show their respect for Atticus, who packs up his belongings. Rev. Sykes encourages Scout to join them: “Miss Jean Louise, stand up, your father’s passin’.” Atticus walks down the aisle in defeat.
Analysis
As the first climax of the novel and dramatic centerpiece of the film, To Kill a Mockingbird’s gripping trial sequence is dense and suffused with the film’s major themes: endemic racism, the corruptness of the American legal system, and the coexistence of good and evil.
The trial obviously targets the innocent Tom Robinson, but, in Atticus’s eyes, the trial is also a vehicle to address the pervasive prejudice and bigotry in Maycomb. Ultimately, Atticus loses the case and Tom is found guilty, and the viewer anticipates this devastating verdict, as the exposition provided in the first three parts of the film illuminates how a Maycomb jury would never acquit a black man accused of raping a white woman, regardless of the evidence. The audience knows Atticus will lose the case, so Mulligan allocates the lengthy sequence’s tension elsewhere: in Atticus’s polite but powerful disassembling of the testimonies of Mayella and Mr. Ewell, and his unveiling of the injustice pervading the trial and Maycomb at large.
The courtroom sequence marks the first onscreen appearances of Tom and Mayella, two characters who have come into contact with evil. As Atticus notes, Mayella is pitiable as a “victim of cruel poverty and ignorance.” Her lonely existence comprises of her own father abusing her and looking after her seven young siblings, all the while struggling with her family’s abject poverty. However, she cannot join the other innocent “mockingbirds” of the novel, as she unfairly inflicts misery onto Tom.
Meanwhile, Tom symbolizes one of the film’s “mockingbirds”—he is an exemplary of good and innocence destroyed by the cruelty of others. Tom is the film’s most tragic character; as an honest and hardworking man, his most fatal crime was not raping Mayella, but possessing enough compassion to feel sorry for her, a white woman. Despite his supreme morality and Atticus’s brilliant defense of his truthful story, he is still found guilty, and the trial remains the film’s glaring unresolved injustice.
Through the jury’s prejudiced verdict, Mulligan critiques both the inherent racism of the jury, and the corruptness of the American criminal justice system. As an exemplar of justice and firm believer in the honor of the law, Atticus believes that all men are equal in court, and any and all prejudices inside the courtroom should dissipate. To Atticus, the criminal justice system is an institution where American values—due process, equal justice—are put to a test and can eventually catalyze progress toward racial and social equality. This is why he nobly requests the jury to find their inner dignity and rationally come to a decision about Tom’s guilt or innocence based on reason and the presented evidence alone: for the jury to arrive at a morally upright judgment, they must view Tom as an equal, as equality and the absence of prejudice is the essential precondition for justice. However, the jury nonetheless convicts Tom as guilty; it’s a disappointing, unfair outcome, one that propels us to consider our own ingrained biases. Within the film, a fair trial is a privilege reserved for white people, and the corrupt discrimination of the legal system paralyzes any chance of justice or social progress.
While the verdict is unfavorable, the black community displays their respect for Atticus, who ultimately fails to sway the jury, but ardently tries his best to promote a fair trial and equality. He anticipated the outcome of the trial (as proven when he says, “...we'd probably lose this time” to Tom), but that didn’t prevent him from elegantly defending Tom and exposing the prejudices of the townspeople, infusing them with more virtuous, morally correct ideals.
In addition to racism and the corruptness of the American legal system, the trial scene also evokes the theme of the coexistence of good and evil. The sequence dramatizes how evil poses a threat to goodness, and some critics claim the scene overly simplifies the representations of good (Atticus, Tom) and evil (Ewell). Regardless, the exaggerated depictions of humanity evoke how evil can destroy an innocent. Ewell, Mayella, and the jury members may not be unambiguously evil people, but their indulgence in vile behavior and beliefs damages the life of Tom, a fundamentally decent person unprepared for this confrontation with the immorality of man. Meanwhile, Atticus, who has experienced the evil sides of man throughout his career, is disappointed with the verdict but chooses to redirect his focus on the forthcoming appeal. He does not lose his hope for humanity and prevailing goodness, which is why he serves as the film’s moral backbone: he realizes that people have both admirable and desirable qualities, and instead of dwelling on the detestable Ewell and the verdict, he maintains his hope for mankind and the eventual achievement of justice for Tom.
