A lawyer reluctantly takes the case of a man accused of killing his wife, but remains uncertain if he is guilty or not.

A masked intruder breaks into the beach house of San Francisco socialite Page Forrester, ties her to her bed, rips open her shirt, and kills her with a hunting knife.

Husband Jack Forrester, arrested for her murder, tries to hire high-profile lawyer Teddy Barnes to defend him.

Barnes is reluctant to take the case since an incident with district attorney Thomas Krasny, her former boss, caused her to quit practicing criminal law.

Her office begins receiving anonymous letters containing non-public case details and an analysis shows they were typed on a 1942 Corona typewriter.

Krasny insists that Forrester planned Page's murder for 18 months, he attacked Jensen to create an alibi for himself, and he is the writer of the anonymous letters.

Barnes announces to the media that she left the district attorney's office when Krasny suppressed evidence that proved Henry Styles was innocent.

In addition, Michael Dorn – two years before starting his 30+ years portraying the character Worf in the Star Trek franchise – has his first credited film role, as polygraph analyst Dan Hislan, while Diane Erickson gives testimony as alibi victim Eileen Avery.

According to Joe Eszterhas, the film originated with producer Martin Ransohoff, who wanted to make a courtroom drama in the vein of Anatomy of a Murder.

[2] According to Eszterhas, Ransohoff was unimpressed with the casting of Glenn Close and tried to make her re-shoot a sex scene, so that he could watch her.

[6] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times described the suspense in the film as "supremely effective" and rated the movie 3 1/2 stars.

[7] Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote: "This thriller doesn't offer the pleasures of style, but it does its job.

The film Physical Evidence was originally conceived as a sequel to Jagged Edge and was meant to have Glenn Close and Robert Loggia reprise their roles.

The project was developed at Columbia Pictures but then head of production Guy McElwaine was replaced by David Puttnam, who, according to producer Martin Ransohoff, said that he did not want to make sequels (Puttnam denied this, saying his problem was the script "wasn't good and for no other reason... when there's a terrific script for Jagged Edge II Columbia will be anxious to make it".)