Reagen's To Kill a Mockingbird Response

I was very shocked at the end of the trial. If this happened today, I think Tom Robison would have been innocent. What happened in the trial was innocent man was convicted because he was black.

  All evidence given to the jury showed that Tom Robison was innocent. The Ewell’s testimony was very weak. To begin with, Mr. Ewell never called a doctor who would have documented Mayella’s injuries. This is very suspicious because if your daughter is hurt it makes sense to call a doctor. The jury had to make a decision with no proof that these injuries ever existed. Another weak point in their testimony was that Mayella’s whole right side was beaten and there for had to be beaten by a left-handed person. Tom could not have hit her with his left hand because his left arm is crippled from an accident when he was a boy. However Mr. Ewell is left handed. This shows that he could have easily beaten Mayella out of anger. When it was Mayella’s turn to testify, she was very cautious and contradicted herself. When Atticus asked her if she remembered Tom ever hitting her, she answers, “No, I don’t recollect if he hit me. I mean yes I do, he hit me.”  

            Tom’s testimony was more powerful than the Ewell’s testimony. Tom’s story fit a lot better with what happened that night. During his testimony, Tom made Mayella sound very lonely. This was probably why she had invited him to help her so many times. On the night of the attack, Mayella said she asked Tom to chop a chiffarobe. Tom had chopped that chiffarobe last spring. This shows another lie by Mayella.  Another thing that Tom said was that out of all the children, Mayella was the only one home. Mayella had sent them all to go get ice-cream. She was home alone. This was very unusual because the Ewell’s are extremely poor so they couldn’t afford ice cream and all the other times Tom had been there, there were always a couple of children watching.

            The only thing that changed the verdict from innocent to guilty was the color of Tom’s skin. 70 years after the Civil War, there was still prejudice in Alabama. Black people were routinely mistreated. As Mr. Raymond cautioned Scout and Dill, “Cry about hell white people give colored folks, without even stopping to think that they’re people, too.” Atticus tried his best, but in this time period prejudice still ruled the mind. As Atticus said in his closing statement, “This case is as simple as black and white.”