The last thing former civil rights lawyer Eddie Dodd (James Woods) expected was to be taking on a homicide case. But that was before the Korean woman begged him to defend her son, and before his idealistic young associate, Roger Baron (Robert Downey, Jr.), tried to shame him into saying yes. He's a good boy, she says, even though he's just killed a fellow inmate while doing time for a murder she claims he never committed. This is a case Dodd would have jumped at years before, but somewhere along the way, the champion of civil liberties and the underdog got off track and became, instead, the cynical champion of every mid-level drug dealer in New York. But as Eddie tries to save the young prisoner's life, he rediscovers his passion for justice and the law.