It is 11 PM, July 8, 1932 in Austin, Texas. Sixty-year-old African-American Charles Jarrell is driving home from Bible study when a car full of white youths suddenly swerves in front of him. A brief altercation ensues. Convinced that the whites are threatening his life, Jarrell fires his pistol at their car and drives away.
The shot kills the unarmed, eighteen-year-old son of Michael Moss, a prominent cotton landlord, politically influential, and an advocate for racial justice. Turmoil explodes in both the black and the white communities. Although in great pain, Moss personally thwarts a lynch mob from taking Jarrell. Still, Moss wants and expects a fair justice system to convict and execute his son’s killer. Jarrell himself fully expects to be lynched, either by the mob or the courts. But neither they nor anyone else can predict the impact of a unique confluence of political events and powerful personalities that bear on the all-white, all male court system tasked to decide Charles Jerrell’s fate.
