Jake Brigance (born 1957) was an attorney from Canton, Mississippi who was best known for his 1984 defense of Carl Lee Hailey, who was on trial for the vigilante killings of the white supremacists Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Willard, who had beaten and raped his ten-year-old daughter.
Biography[]
Jake Brigance was born in Canton, Mississippi in 1957, and he became an attorney. He represented people from his town in civil cases, with one of his clients being Carl Lee Hailey's brother. In 1984, he became Hailey's attorney after Hailey was tried for the murders of white supremacists Billy Ray Cobb and Pete Willard (who had raped his daughter Tonya Hailey) and the accidental wounding of policeman Dwayne Looney. Brigance formed a defense team consisting of liberal law student Ellen Roark, divorce attorney Harry Rex Vonner, and his mentor Lucien Wilbanks, and he braved attacks on himself and his defense team (which included the burning of his house; an assault on his secretary Ethel Twitty, which left her husband dead; and the kidnapping and assault of Roark by Freddie Lee Cobb). Brigance won the case, however, by having the white jury pretend that Tonya Hailey was a white girl as he told them her story, and he brought his wife and daughter to a cookout at Hailey's house to celebrate his freedom.