A wealthy farmer and his sister are murdered just days after the man hired an uneducated farmhand (Harry De More).

A detective eager to collect reward money (Charles Hill Mailes) brutally forces a confession from the farmhand and his mentally disabled brother.

Like the character in her film, Charles Stielow was an uneducated farmhand unjustly accused of murder and sentenced to death.

Attorney Grace Humiston and suffrage activist Inez Milholland Boissevain were instrumental in efforts to exonerate him.

Nonethless, Universal rushed the film into release less than a week after New York governor Charles S. Whitman commuted Stielow's death sentence.