To protect his wife's "secret", a small town Southern lawyer in the 1960s decides to defend a young man accused of murder, all while running for Congress and encountering personal threats to his family.

After dedicating years of his life to the practice of law in the small town of Silver Shade, Daniel Webster Stewart (Louis Gossett Jr) has closed his office in order to devote his time to his lifelong dream of running for Congress. But when the beautiful young wife of his political opponent Horton Roundtree (Robert Urich) is brutally murdered, Daniel finds that he must go back into the courtroom again. Daniel's friend Curtis Gallagher has been falsely accused of the murder and someone has threatened to reveal a shocking secret about Daniel's wife Olivia if he refuses to defend Curtis. However there is someone else in town who is just as anxious to keep Daniel off the case.—Anonymous