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A monologue from the screenplay by Akiva Goldsman (Based on the novel by John Grisham)
Jake Tyler Brigance
Now I wanna tell you a story. I’m gonna ask ya’all to close your eyes while I tell you this story. I want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to yourselves.
This is a story about a little girl walking home from the grocery store one sunny afternoon. I want you to picture this little girl. Suddenly a truck races up. Two men jump out and grab her.
They drag her into a nearby field and they tie her up, and they rip her clothes from her body. Now they climb on, first one then the other, raping her, shattering everything innocent and pure — vicious thrusts — in a fog of drunken breath and sweat.
And when they’re done, after they killed her tiny womb, murdered any chance for her to bear children, to have life beyond her own, they decide to use her for target practice.
So they start throwing full beer cans at her. They throw ’em so hard that it tears the flesh all the way to her bones — and they urinate on her. Now comes the hanging. They have a rope; they tie a noose.
Imagine the noose pulling tight around her neck and a sudden blinding jerk. She’s pulled into the air and her feet and legs go kicking and they don’t find the ground. The hanging branch isn’t strong enough.
It snaps and she falls back to the earth. So they pick her up, throw her in the back of the truck, and drive out to Foggy Creek Bridge and pitch her over the edge. And she drops some 30 feet down to the creek bottom below.
Can you see her? Her raped, beaten, broken body, soaked in their urine, soaked in their s*men, soaked in her blood — left to die. Can you see her? I want you to picture that little girl.
Now imagine she’s white. The defense rests your honor.