A Time To Kill Trivia Quiz

Answer: Billy Ray Cobb

In the first paragraph, John Grisham describes Billy Ray Cobb as a redneck who "at the age of 23 was already a two-year veteran of the state penitentiary at Parchman."

Answer: Tonya Hailey

She is 10 years old. The only daughter of Carl Lee Hailey, she has three brothers. She is raped by Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Willard, the latter being the stupid sidekick.

Answer: Carl Lee Hailey

He worked with the newspaper plant, and was devastated when he heard about the rapings. He immediately went to his friend, Jake Brigance, for representation.

Answer: M-16 Assault Rifle

He used the guns in Vietnam, so he knew how they worked. He visited his friend from Vietnam and asked whether he had an M-16 or not.

Answer: Jake Brigance

He is happily married and has one daughter. He is continually threatened by the KKK and encounters one person who actually had a bomb to be planted on the side of his home. One day, though, his beautiful Victorian home is burnt to the ground. He stays with the landlord of his office, and consults him for advice.

The landlord creates a wonderful closing argument that eventually won Jake the case.

Answer: True

This is the reason for Jake getting hired. Carl Lee was acquainted with Jake, so he went to him for his legal services. He fires Jake once, for a crook of a lawyer named Bo Marsharfsky. Jake gets Lester to convince Carl Lee to rehire him. Good choice.

Answer: Governor

Jake always called him Governor because he wanted to antagonize him. Buckley always wanted to be seen by the cameras; but Jake didn't exactly hate seeing his face on TV either.

Answer: $900

Carl Lee could not afford to pay more than $900. He was in jail at the time, and was fired from his job. So, he only had $900 to spare, which he really needed but knew he had to pay Jake.

Answer: False

He had her study the M'Naghten RULE. It is a legal ruling stating that an accused criminal must have been suffering from a mental disease at the time he or she committed a crime and have known neither the nature and quality of the act nor that the act was wrong in order to be judged as insane.

A British court decision of 1843 that stated that an insanity defense can be established by proving that the defendant did not know what he or she was doing or did not realize that it was wrong.

Answer: Yes

John Grisham mentions in the Author's Note at the beginning of the book that it is a true story. He was part of the audience at a trial in which a little girl testified against the man who raped her very brutally. As he was watching, he started thinking that if he were her father, he would want to shoot that violent man. See the connection.

He became obsessed with this idea, and started to wonder at what a jury panel full of average people would do to a father who had shot a rapist. He created a first chapter in longhand, and asked his wife, Renée to read it.

She liked it, and said she wanted to see the next chapter. A month later, he handed her chapters two and three, and she was hooked. He kept working on it, and when his wife finished the final chapter, they shipped it off to New York.

His new agent, Jay Garon, said that this novel would get published. It was accepted by Wynwood Press, which published 5,000 copies. Within 100 miles, it sold well, but was rejected by the rest of the nation.

His second novel shed new light on "A Time to Kill".