In the wake of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, seven men and one woman are arrested and charged with conspiring to kill the President. The lone woman charged, Mary Surratt, owns a boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and others met and planned the attack. Newly-minted lawyer, Frederick Aiken, reluctantly agrees to defend Surratt before a military tribunal. Aiken realizes his client may be innocent and that she is being used as bait in order to capture the only conspirator to have escaped a massive manhunt, her own son. A worthy and beautifully shot drama from Robert Redford.