Criminal defense attorney J.R. Cuttler begins his Sunday with thoughts of flying his airplane around the East Texas area and later watching his Dallas Cowboys play the hated Washington Redskins. That thought is shattered in an instant when the local radio station reports the abduction and rape of a twenty-eight year old woman and her twelve year old niece from the local Wal-Mart parking lot. The identity of the victims and the initial allegations as to their assailant would draw Cuttler into a capital murder case that would forever change his life and his practice of law.
This small, deep East Texas town located on the Texas-Louisiana border never really accepted the end of the Civil War. Therefore, when two White women are allegedly abducted, beaten, raped and sodomized by a young "uppity" Black Man, the county digresses into the mind-set of the 1850's.
After his arrest in another jurisdiction, Lincoln Johnson is beaten beyond recognition by two deputies returning him to the local jail. It is this senseless barbarity that raises Cuttler's ire to the degree that he agrees to represent the accused.
The development of pre-trial tactics, the trial, and hypnotic conclusion pits modern scientific methodology and old time trial theatrics.
