Plot Summary
In 1970, the first person narrator, a 23-year-old college drop-out by the name of Willie Traynor, comes to Clanton, Mississippi for an internship at the local newspaper, The Ford County Times. However the editor, Wilson Caudle, drives the newspaper into bankruptcy through years of mismanagement. Willie decides to buy the paper spontaneously for fifty-thousand dollars, through money from his wealthy grandmother, and becomes the editor and owner of The Ford County Times. Shortly after this, a member of the notorious and scandalous Padgitt family brutally rapes and kills a young widow named Rhoda Kassellaw. The murderer, Danny Padgitt, is tried in front of a jury and is found guilty. Prior to being sentenced, Danny threatens to kill each of the jury members, should they convict him. Although they do find him guilty, the jury cannot decide whether to send him to life in prison or to Death Row, so Danny is sentenced to life in prison at the Mississippi State Penitentiary.
After only nine years in prison, Danny Padgitt is paroled and returns to Clanton. Immediately, two jury members are killed and one is nearly killed by a bomb. Jury member and close friend of Willie, Miss Callie Ruffin, reveals that the recent victims were the jurors who were against sentencing Danny to Death Row. Callie Ruffin is black, and was the first black on a jury trying a white criminal in Ford County. With her husband, she has a family of highly accomplished adult children, who live outside of Mississippi. Convinced that Danny is exacting his revenge, as promised, the judge of Clanton issues an arrest for Danny Padgitt. At Padgitt's trial, the former lover of Rhoda Kassellaw, Hank Hooten, guns down Danny Padgitt in the courtroom by positioning himself on the balcony. Willie later discovers that the assassin is also a schizophrenic and would often hear the voices of the victim's children in his head, convincing him to murder Danny and the three jurors who voted against his conviction to Death Row. After nine years of ownership, Willie sells The Ford County Times for 1.5 million dollars. Soon after, Callie Ruffin dies of a heart attack, and the book ends with Willie writing her obituary.
Read more about this topic: The Last Juror
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