To Kill a Mockingbird key trial evidence

Ms. O’Connor,

For our shared students, here is the prompt that we will be working on next week in our end-of-book essays:

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus Finch does his best to persuade the jury of Tom Robinson’s innocence.  

Write a well-developed essay, demonstrating whether or not Atticus should have won the case.  Use specific and relevant detail from the text, including quoted and cited evidence to support your position.

Here are some key points that we have identified in freshmen classes about Atticus’s argument.

Starting with Atticus’s cross-examination of Sheriff Heck Tate in chapter 17, identify the significant questions and what the audience learns by his question and the witness response.

Atticus	Witness Response and what we learned	page #
Bob Ewell’s questions “Did you call a doctor?”	“No”  “Something sho happened, it was obvious” There’s no medical record of the rape.	167
“what side of the face was she hit”	“the right side mr.Finch” tom does not have a left arm because he lost it in a cotton gin	169
‘Can you read and write”	Mr.Ewell writes with his left hand	176
Mayella’s questions “Do you love your father’	“he does tollable” he drinks and when he does he beats his kids	183
“who are your friends”	she acts as if she has been insulted she is a lonely lady who is attracted to a black man	183
“where were the other children”	shes says they ran off but she really paid them to get ice cream	191
“when he is riled has he ever beaten you”	no, shes too far in and can’t change it and start to tell the truth	184
Tom’s questioning “why did you go inside the fence lots of times”	seemed like every time I passed by she had a little something for me to do	191
“jumped on you violently”	no hugged me around the waist	194
“why were you scared”	is you was a n***** like me you would be scared too, white people hated black people therefore he is either raping her or assaulting her, get inside the skin of a black man	195