Question
This is what got me thinking of that question: Patrick McGoohan when playing Omar Noose seems to be bi-racial, specifically part-black and part-white, although in other pictures of the actor, he doesn't.
Maybe it's due to not having the best makeup when the film was made, especially through HD lenses we now have, but it seems like a purposeful decision. His hair also looks almost kinky, but not quite, and skin is white, but blotchy, with a brownish hue.
Furthermore, there seems to be a concerted effort in the plot to make his race ambiguous to the viewer. For instance, what's the point of him telling Brigance he doesn't think a black person can get a fair trial in all of Mississippi? The obvious reason for denying Brigance's motion for change of venue would be Noose thinks any person could have a fair trial in his courtroom! But, no, he says, it's all theater. That's a pretty liberal and nihilist view for a powerful judge (that the DA loves so much) to take.
There's a lot of black history to back up that even if there was a smidge of black in your genes, even if you looked white as white could look, you were considered black. And in related history, many years after slavery, passing for white, as a black person, was common enough when they could, so black people could experience white privilege in America.
The film's dominant theme is American racism between black and white Americans, so it wouldn't be a stretch to say the filmmakers wanted to introduce at least some ambiguity in an otherwise strictly good-versus-evil scenario, and fittingly in the highly-symbolic character of the judge in a highly symbolic case; as the NAACP representative argues at the start of the film (and unironically the judge's name in a capital murder case is Judge Noose? That's an obvious wink-wink-jab-jab). Ambiguity with him would be so a ripe an opportunity, firstly, but moreover, he might be the only character whose racial ambiguity wouldn't (at least not greatly) affect the plot.
Is there any source for of a discussion of this? I've found it very difficult to get hits on this from search engines, given the keywords for such a search (white, black, bi-racial, noose, judge, etc.) bringing back hits of a lot of irrelevant pages (even when I include "A Time to Kill").
Answer
what's the point of him telling Brigance he doesn't think a black person can get a fair trial in all of Mississippi? The obvious reason for denying Brigance's motion for change of venue would be Noose thinks any person could have a fair trial in his courtroom! But, no, he says, it's all theater.
That was an informal, ex parte, off-the-record conversation, so the judge resorted to being upfront and straightforward.
Should Brigance go ahead with his motion, the rejection reason would of course be what you say.
But the judge quite frankly just admitted that all the courts in the area were hopelessly biased against black people, so there was no point trying to save the defendant's life.
Re the main question, there doesn't appear to be any factual info available publicly. You would need to ask the filmmakers.
Personally, I don't think there was any point or intention to make the judge appear partially black. Ultimately, it was the jury to decide the verdict, not the judge, and the film is about how the jury were poignantly pointed to their own bias and so prompted to act impartially.
Answered By - Greendrake
