In Canton Mississippi 10-year-old Tonya Hailey is viciously brutalized by two white racist rednecks -- James Louis "Pete" Willard and Billy Ray Cobb. Almost immediately after Tonya is found and rushed to a hospital Pete and Billy Ray are found at a roadside bar where they had been bragging about what they did to Tonya. Tonya''s understandably distraught and enraged father Carl Lee Hailey remembers a case from a year ago when four white men raped an African-American girl in a nearby town and got acquitted. Carl is determined to not let that happen in this case. While deputy Dwayne Powell Looney is escorting Pete and Billy Ray up a flight of stairs to a court room Carl emerges from the building''s basement with an assault rifle and he kills Pete and Billy Ray for what they did to Tonya.