Casey is counting on an open-and-shut case, a sure success for her first effort with the Freedom Project, the renowned charity group dedicated to helping exonerate wrongfully convicted prisoners. Not only is the Freedom Project giving Casey the chance to help innocent people, but its founder, Robert Graham, is offering Casey a one-million-dollar annual pledge to her legal clinic for taking on just two jobs a year.

Her first assignment is to revive the case of Dwayne Hubbard, an indigent black man serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of a college student seventeen years ago. Using DNA evidence, Casey expects to easily prove Hubbard's innocence. Yet when she arrives in rural Auburn, New York, she meets immediate and aggressive resistance.

Tormented by death threats and assassination attempts, Casey investigates a prosecution apparently rife with lies. From the judge, the lawyers, the jury, to the police, she traces a web of corruption surrounding the destruction of one young man. But in all the chaos, Casey's hardest challenge may be just staying alive.