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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What question does Jake ask of Ozzie during cross-examination that Buckley wildly objects to and Jake withdraws, but Ozzie has already nodded affirmatively to?

2. What does Wanda Womack ask the jury panel to consider to convince them to rule not guilty by reason of insanity?

3. Jake knows Judge Noose will feel how about the National Guard being called in?

4. How many black people does Lucien plan to bring to the courthouse and chant "Free Carl Lee"?

5. At one point, talk amongst the jurors gradually leads toward a guilty verdict, based essentially on what?

Short Essay Questions

1. What offer does Lucien make to Jake regarding the jury that he objects to?

2. How do Harry Rex's pickup and Jake's Saab reflect more than a matter of taste, but of personality?

3. How is Jake's closing argument indicative of it being his finest hour?

4. What does the reader learn was key to the jury being swayed to finding an innocent by reason of insanity verdict?

5. Why is everyone relieved when Jake declines to question Murphy, the janitor, in cross-examination?

6. Upon arrival at the hospital to visit Ellen following the Ku Klux Klan attack, how does her father describe to Jake and Harry Rex the way she incurred injuries to the head requiring thirty-nine stitches?

7. Why do the jurors feel more incarcerated than safe?

8. What transpires when Clyde Acker walks for a cola at the Temple Inn?

9. On Monday, the first morning of the trial, what positions does Jake direct Ellen and Harry Rex, his two assistants, to assume?

10. What transpires as the forty Ku Klux Klansmen arrive to demonstrate at the courthouse where the black protesters held their vigil?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

Provide examples from the text where John Grisham utilizes the language and culture of the south to place the reader in the small, Mississippi town of Clanton.

Essay Topic 2

John Grisham is noted for his mastering the writing style with roller coaster peaks and valleys between and within chapters. He also includes sudden twists and turns with brief, intermittent recoveries. Examine how his style in "A Time to Kill," and include examples from the text.

Essay Topic 3

Carl Lee Hailey clearly murdered two men who gang raped his ten-year-old daughter. While he did so in retaliation, it was not in the heat of the moment, but the result of well-planned and orchestrated maneuvering. Why don't Jake and Sheriff Ozzie Walls make make an effort to stop it before it will happen? Why is Deputy Looney, who Carl Lee shoots accidentally in the leg and which is amputated, able to forgive him, much less defend him in court? Why do Klansman in Nettles County believe the victims of the murder got what they deserved, but only retaliate given the racial differences? Explain why Carl Lee is treated and viewed with respect by the deputies, but feared by the other prisoners in the jail? Why does the jury find Carl Lee "not guilty by reason of insanity" when he was not? In delving deeper into these questions, what is the overall theme of the novel?

(see the answer keys)

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