A fictionalized composite of several celebrated murder cases, particularly the Stielow case, in which an innocent man is convicted and sentenced to death on purely speculative evidence.
After a botched robbery results in the brutal murder of a rural family, two drifters elude police, in the end coming to terms with their own mortality and the repercussions of their vile atrocity.
A newspaper publisher, wanting to prove a point about the insufficiency of circumstantial evidence, talks his possible son-in-law Tom into a hoax in an attempt to expose ineptitude of the city's hard-line district attorney. The plan is to have Tom plant clues leading to his arrest for killing a female nightclub dancer. Once Tom is found guilty, he is to reveal the setup and humiliate the DA.
A psychotic man opens fire in a diner, murdering numerous people before killing himself. The survivors struggle in different ways following this horrendous event: a doctor doubts his own instincts and elects to use an experimental medical procedure on his wife, while a gambler believes he's on a lucky streak. A waitress begins engaging in promiscuous sex, and a young girl whose father is among the dead gains unexpected fame.
Story of a promising high school basketball star and his relationships with two brothers, one a drug dealer and the other a former basketball star fallen on hard times and now employed as a security guard.