A babysitter is found brutally murdered in Santa Ana, California, with five young children in the home left unscathed. The parents are quick to point to Kenneth Clair, a local transient who burglarized their home in the past. Clair is convicted of capital murder and sent to death row. But recent DNA analyses and allegations of corruption at the Orange County District Attorney's Office raise questions about the validity of this conviction. The DA's office denies the allegations and says the conviction should stand.

After a family of six is found brutally murdered in a rural Texas town, a perpetrator confesses to the crime. Police however, can't believe one man alone could murder six people, and Anthony Graves is named as an accomplice. Graves is sentenced to death, but maintains his innocence. His case is eventually taken up by a journalism professor who discovers a District Attorney engaged in misconduct who is intent on keeping a guiltless man in prison.