The character of Rollie Wedge was beefed up considerably from the novel with the aim that Jack Nicholson would play him. Things didn't quite go according to plan and the part went to the lesser known actor, Raymond J. Barry, instead.
When Lee (Faye Dunaway) shows Adam (Chris O'Donnell) the photo allegedly of her father at a lynching in Mississippi as a boy, it is actually the iconic photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Indiana. The young Sam Cayhill has been edited into the original photograph.
In the scene in which Adam visits the Klan gathering on the night before the execution the same extra (an older man in a baseball cap) can be seen in adjacent shots both behind Adam and the gang of thugs on the opposite side of the room.