James Neal, who plays defense attorney A.L. Henson, was in fact an attorney and prosecutor in real life. He was a Special Prosecuting Attorney who won the convictions of Richard Nixon's aides H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Mitchell during the Watergate trial in 1974. He had several other significant cases in his career. Among his clients were John Landis (whom he successfully defended against charges of voluntary manslaughter after Vic Morrow, Renee Chen and My-ca Dinh Le were killed on the set of Ai confini della realtà (1983); George Nichopoulos, against charges that he overprescribed drugs to Elvis Presley; and Exxon in the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Just two years after this movie was filmed, he was named by "Forbes Magazine" as one of the five best trial lawyers of 1985.
John Wallace, who was from Chipley, GA (now known as Pine Mountain in Harris County), has a road named for him. This road is known as "Wallace Rd." and intersects with Crawford Creek Rd. It has become somewhat controversial, and nobody knows when it was officially named, or who named it.
Filmed primarily in the city of Greenville, GA, not Monticello. The Greenville city center was used as a stand-in for old Newnan.
Many of the actors in this movie later made appearances in the tv series In The Heat Of The Night (1988-1995)