When a Black Panther raid on the house of a dope dealer goes awry, an innocent young man is killed and the leader of the raid team, a Panther named Charles Henderson (Obba Babatunde), is sentenced to life in prison. Bestselling author Paul Freeman (Modine) offers a creative-writing class in Henderson's prison, initially looking for a story for his next book; but when Henderson becomes his student, Freeman starts to investigate Henderson's case and becomes convinced that, after 20 years, Henderson deserves to be released--but the next step is convincing the sister of the man whose death Henderson is responsible for.