Follows the story of eleven black men who were bailed out of jail, forced into slavery on a Georgia farm in 1921, and eventually murdered, and the trials of the white plantation owner and the black overseer, based on the FBI's notes.

In this first narrative history of Polly Bodine, the first American woman put on trial for capital murder from 1844-1846, a constitutional lawyer and crime historian shows how dueling trial lawyers, ruthless newsmen and shameless hucksters turned her casein America's formative tabloid trial.