One of the main characters in the movie “A Time to Kill” is Carl (IMBD.com, 2013). Carl realizes that some goons have assaulted his daughter sexually, a few hours after it occurred (IMBD.com, 2013). He immediately runs home to rescue the young girl from the traumatizing experience. It is upon arriving home that he faces an ethical dilemma. He is stuck between dealing with the case individually and reporting the case to the courts. After thinking carefully, Carl resolves to deal with the two suspects individually (IMBD.com, 2013). He reacts by killing the two suspects on the spot. Carl decides to kill the two men when he recalls a case that had happened the previous year, whereby four white men raped a dark-skinned girl and the court dismissed the case (IMBD.com, 2013). According to Carl, the verdict reached by the court was unfair. As a result, Carl undermines the possibility of the courts doing justice to the two men this time round. He views the actions of the two white men as a plan by white Americans to terrorize the African- American people. Therefore, he decides to take the law into his own hands (IMBD.com, 2013). By so doing, Carl hopes to protect all children of the African origin, including his own daughters and the entire black society from the injustices of the white men. I choose to explain this action through the theory of utilitarianism. The principle of utilitarianism emphasizes on the need to rely on reason and not metaphysics. This principle originated from the ideas of John Stuart Mill that the correctness or fairness of an action can be recognized by examining its outcomes or consequences (West, 2004). If the results are favorable, Mill considers an action or decision as moral. On the other hand, Mill considers an action or decision as immoral if the consequences are undesirable. Therefore, the theory of utilitarianism is a “teological principle or a consequential theory” (Carroll & Buchholtz, 2010, p.248). The utilitarianism theory claims, “Our actions should always seek to produce the greatest ratio of good to evil for everybody” (West, 2004, p.169). A different manner of explaining utilitarianism is to state that one ought to do things that embody the greatest good for the greatest number of people. This is what Mill calls the law of greatest happiness. According to this ideology, human beings seek to decrease pain and maximize happiness. Hence, an action that is correct morally must lead to the greatest possible pleasure. The good thing with utilitarianism is that it leads the decision maker to consider the common good or general welfare. It offers a norm outside of egotism by which to evaluate the value of a certain action. The utilitarianism theory applies to Carl’s action (killing the two men who raped his daughter) because he had to consider consequences that would follow. By killing the two men, Carl would save other African-American children from the two rapists, but at the same time, there was a possibility that he would face murder charges and infuriate the entire white society. Therefore, to determine whether the action was moral or not, we can evaluate these consequences against the principles of the theory. The first step in applying this theory is examining whether the consequences of the action are good, or bad. If the consequences seem favorable, then the action is