A young woman with a difficult past is sentenced for a murder she didn't commit, but revealing the truth could hurt people she loves.
Edith Crawford (Claire Du Brey), the widow of Governor Dick Crawford, confronts her brother, District Attorney John Grant (Alan Dinehart) with a stack of unsigned love letters she found in her husband's private safe, John advises her to burn them. Edith refuses, vowing to find the author of the letters and make her suffer. John gives her a newspaper clipping about Nora Moran (Zita Johann), the first woman to be executed in the electric chair in 20 years. The camera pans to the fireplace as Grant describes the "cold-blooded" preparations for an execution. Flashback to the prison, where the doctor gives Nora a sedative. and a kindly matron tells her there might still be hope, if she would only tell why she did it. Nora refuses. Seeking consolation, her confused mind focuses on Father Ryan (Henry B. Walthall) as she remembers the events of her life. At age 5, after years in a Catholic orphanage, she is adopted by the kindly Morans. When they are killed in a car crash, Nora pays their debts and with the remaining $300 trains as a dancer. She cannot find work, until a traveling circus hires her as assistant to Paulino (John Miljan), the lion tamer. It is "a glorious adventure" until Paulino rapes her. In the prison, Sadie (Ann Brody) appears and offers to change the dream, reminding Nora that she once gave a suicidal Nora a hundred dollars. Nora wants to remember being happy. Working in a New York night club chorus line, she meets Dick Crawford (Paul Cavanagh) and the two start an affair. He brings her to live in a house just over the state line where he can see her twice a week. But in her dream, the doorbell rings and Nora remembers what is coming. It is Grant. He and his sister are ambitious. Grant has groomed Crawford to run for governor to further his own political ambitions. He threatens to reveal Nora's personal history, including her connection to the circus playing in town. Crawford believes that she has been promiscuous and leaves. The dream image of Grant tells her she must go on with it, she cannot change what has already happened. The preparations for execution continues, She imagines Grant and Crawford seeing her in her coffin. Grant explains why her head is partly shaved --- in detail. She must die again tonight. Nora wants to wake up. Prison matron Mrs Watts (Sarah Padden) helps her to walk. Grant offers Nora a kickback but she refuses. Two hours later, she calls Grant to the house and shows him Paulino's body. Paulino had come to blackmail her. She killed him. To save Crawford, they try to cover up Paulino's death by moving the body near the train, but Nora is apprehended and arrested for first-degree murder. Nora does not testify in her defense, and is found guilty. In the present, Edith remains unsympathetic. Grant tells her that if Nora had told the whole story she would have been acquitted and he would have gone to prison and Crawford would have been run out of the state. Edith is proud that Crawford resisted the temptation to pardon Nora. Grant shows Edith a letter Crawford wrote to him. Crawford learns of Nora's execution. He remembers going back, fighting Paulino and killing him in self-defense. Nora tells him to leave. Crawford talks to Nora's spirit, appearing from her cell where Father Ryan is praying with her. He tries to prevent the execution but is too late. She disappears but he hears her voice saying here is nothing to fear from death. He finished the letter and shoots himself. In the present, with Edith's consent, Grant burns all of Crawford's letters.
Nora Moran, a young woman with a difficult and tragic past, is sentenced to die for a murder that she did not commit. She could easily reveal the truth and save her own life, but it might damage the lives, careers, and reputations of people she loves.—Kieran Kenney
When Edith Crawford (Claire Du Brey), widow of Governor Dick Crawford, comes to her brother, District Attorney John Grant (Alan Dinehart), with love letters she found in her husband's safe, John advises her to burn the letters. He then shows her a newspaper clipping about the other woman in her husband's life, Nora Moran (Zita Johann), who was the first woman to die in the electric chair in 20 years, and tells Nora's story.
In the past, as preparations are being made for her execution, the 21-year-old Nora has a chance for a reprieve if she tells the reason she committed the murder with which she is charged. To quiet the distressed girl, she is given an opiate. Under the influence of the drug, Nora remembers her life as a child and the automobile crash over a cliff that killed her parents. In her memory, after she is refused a job dancing in a chorus, she convinces Paulino (John Miljan), a lion wrestler with a traveling circus, to hire her as his assistant. She is happy until Paulino enters her train suite and rapes her.
Still under the opiate's influence, Nora relives events from her past and questions whether it ultimately was a good thing that she left the circus. She remembers that later, as a dancing girl, she met Crawford (Paul Cavanagh), danced with him, spent a week of romance with him and received a ring from him. Edith now breaks into John's story and angrily states that while Crawford and Nora were enjoying their romance, she was slaving for Crawford. John then rebukes his sister, reminding her that she wanted Crawford because of social ambition, and he admits that the reason he groomed Crawford for the governorship was to further his own political power. John says that because he was afraid of a possible scandal, he investigated Nora and learned that Crawford set her up in a house across the state line, where they would see each other Mondays and Fridays.
In the past, John rings Nora's bell, and knowing what will happen in the future, she contemplates not answering, but she fatalistically realizes that she must answer the door. John talks to Nora, and it is only when he threatens to break the story of the scandal that Nora learns Crawford is married and running for governor. To give Crawford the wrong opinion of her so that he will break up with her, Nora falsely confesses relationships with other men, after which he leaves in disgust. Alone with John, Nora, knowing what is about to happen, confesses that she is terrified of going through the murder again, and John blames himself for not leaving soon enough. In prison, Nora, nearly insane from her memories and the effect of the drug, pleads that she not be allowed to go back to sleep. John, continuing the story to Edith, says that Crawford, now governor, refused to grant Nora a stay.
John says that on the night of the murder, Nora refused his money and resolved to leave town on the next train. That night, she telephones John at his hotel for help, and when he arrives at her house, she shows him the body of Paulino, whom, she says, she killed with a whip when he threatened to blackmail Crawford. John and Nora plan to make it appear that Paulino died in a drunken fall from the circus train, but Nora is apprehended. John explains to Edith that Nora refused a lawyer, even though he could have gotten her off.
The night of Nora's execution, Crawford denies her reprieve and remembers returning to Nora's the night of the crime and finding Paulino there. After Paulino threatens to blackmail Crawford, they struggle. As Paulino chokes Crawford, Crawford strikes him with the whip handle. Realizing that Paulino is dead, Nora convinces Crawford to leave so that their happiness together will not be tainted by scandal. As Nora is about to be executed, Crawford talks with her apparition. She says that there is nothing to fear in death and she is dying for the good things he will do. Although she argues against a pardon, Crawford confesses that he killed Paulino and tries to pardon her, but his telephone line is dead.
As Nora's smiling vision disappears, he realizes that she is dead. Hearing her voice repeat that there is nothing to fear in death, Crawford writes a letter to John and shoots himself. After John asks Edith whether the story will end or begin there, she gives him Nora's letters, which he burns.
