To Kill A Mockingbird

Yes, i've finally read it! the classic To Kill A Mocking Bird.

"One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men sare created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond or huling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace 1935 for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to saisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious - because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the childern left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe - some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they're born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others - some people are born gifted beyong the normal scope of most men.

But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal - there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humbles J.P. court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the greal levellers, and in our courts all men are created equal."

He looked up. "It ain't right. He didn't kill anybody eveil if he was guilty. He didn't take anybody's life."

"You know rape's a capital offence in Alabama," said Atticus.

"Yessir, but the jury didn't have to give him death - if they wanted to they could've given him twenty years."

"Given," said Atticus. "Tom Robinson's a coloured man, Jem. No jury in this part of the world's going to say, 'We think you're guilty, but not very,' on a charge like that. It was either straight acquittal or nothing."

Jem was shaking his head. "I know it's not right, but I can't figure out what's wrong - maybe rape shouldn't be a capital offence..."

Atticus dropped his newspaper beside his chair. He siad he didn't have any quarrel with the rape statute, none whatever, but he did have deep misgivings when the state asked and the jury gave a death penalty on purely circumstantial evidence. He glanced at me, saw I was listening, and made it easier. "- I mean, before a man is sentenced to death for muder, say, there should be one or two eye-witnesses. Someone should be able to say, 'Yes, I was there and saw him pull the trigger.' "

"But lots of folks have been hung - hanged - on circumstantial evidence," said Jem.

"I know, and lots of 'em probably deserved it, too - but in the absence of eye-witnesses there's always a doubt, sometimes only the shadow of a doubt. The law says 'reasonable doubt', but I think a defendan't entitled to the shadow of a doubt. There's always the possibility, no matter how improbable, that he's innocent."