Question: How much time did Derek do? Also, Derek killed a couple guys, and his black friend stole a TV, so how could he have gotten out sooner than his friend?
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Answer: The difference in their punishment is one of the major points of the film. It's about racial injustice, and that black offenders get harsher punishments than white offenders. For the friend, it isn't stealing the TV that gets him the long sentence. It's that he dropped it on the cop's foot which the prosecutor twisted into in attempted murder charge. Derek did a few years for killing the one guy, but as he was white, the dead guy black, and Derek was, at least at the beginning of the events, defending his home, property, and arguably the lives of his family and himself, his sentence wasn't nearly as harsh.
johnrosa