The Last Juror

In 1970, the future of one of Mississippi's more colorful weekly newspapers, The Ford County Times, looked bleak until Willie Traynor, a twenty-three-year-old college dropout, assumed ownership. Reporting all the gruesome details of a recent rape and murder of a young mother by a member of the notorious Padgitt family, Willie saved the paper and helped bring the murderer, Danny Padgitt, to justice. Tried before a packed courthouse in Clanton, Mississippi, Padgitt - in a startling finale of the trial - threatened revenge against the jurors should they dare convict him. Though found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, Danny Padgitt managed to get himself paroled after nine years, returning to Ford County to begin his revenge.