To Kill A Mockingbird Trial Analysis

About 20,000 innocent people in the U.S. are in prison for crimes they didn’t commit, according to the Huffington Post. This fact is relates to the novel To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, where readers follow the main character, Scout, as she endeavors to understand her cryptic, Southern-Alabaman community. More specifically, the notorious trial of Tom Robinson, a local black man who has been accused of raping Mayella Ewell, a young white woman. Although Judge Taylor specifically appointed Atticus to represent Tom, the trial was unfair because the jury ignored the concrete evidence presented by the defense.

The witnesses in the trial presented convoluted versions of what happened the night of November twenty-first, the night that Tom

When Jem is with Miss Maudie one day, she asks him, “Did it ever occur to you that Judge Taylor naming Atticus to defend [Tom]? That Judge Taylor might have had his reasons for naming him?” (Lee 219). Miss Maudie reminds Jem that Judge Taylor was trying to create the most-fair environment for Tom in court. This example is significant because it shows that Tom wasn’t alone in this fight against the Ewells. She reveals that there were other people who tried to help Tom, even though the outcome was unfavorable for them.

Even though this could’ve given Tom an advantage, there was no possible outcome that would’ve been in Tom’s favor. When Scout asks him why he already knows why Tom won’t win the trial, Atticus immediately says, “Simply because we were licked a hundred years before we started” (Lee 78). Atticus knew that even with all of the advantages Tom could receive, there would be no way to win the trial. Due to the other testimonies, along with Bob Ewell’s tough, cruel reputation, Tom was pre-destined to be declared guilty, never having a chance to present his testimony to an unbiased

As stated previously, the trial of Tom Robinson was unfair because the testimonies of the witnesses conflicted with each other, and his Eighth Amendment rights were violated. It is clear that when Harper Lee was writing this story that she was trying to expose the ugliness of the race relations in the U.S. of the time. Noting that this story was published in the 1960’s, close to the height of the Civil Rights Movement, To Kill a Mockingbird was making another statement, but one not-so fictional. There was a bigger, more serious, problem with the race relations in the United States. From the point-of-view of an innocent child, this novel forced people to see the power of injustice towards minorities—both then and