Just Cause is a 1995 American crime thriller film directed by Arne Glimcher and starring Sean Connery and Laurence Fishburne. It is based on John Katzenbach's novel of the same name.
Contents
Plot
Paul Armstrong, a liberal Harvard professor and former lawyer opposed to capital punishment, is persuaded by an elderly woman to go to Florida to investigate the conviction of her grandson Bobby Earl Ferguson for murder. Ferguson, a former Cornell University student, was convicted of raping and brutally murdering a young white girl named Joanie Shriver eight years prior. Ferguson tells Armstrong that he was physically and psychologically tortured by two police detectives to get a forced confession, but firmly states he is innocent. Armstrong, believing in his innocence, must save him from being executed in the electric chair. As Armstrong digs deeper into the case, he discovers that Tanny Brown, the chief detective on the case, did indeed coerce Ferguson's confession.
Ferguson tells the professor that the murder was actually committed by Blair Sullivan, a serial killer awaiting execution. According to Ferguson, Sullivan constantly taunts him about his conviction for the crime. Sullivan, through the use of cryptic Biblical clues, provides a lead on the location of the knife used to kill the girl. Armstrong and Brown investigate, and find the weapon concealed in an old culvert. Brown tries to threaten Armstrong into abandoning the investigation, and Armstrong in turn discovers why Brown is so passionate about the Ferguson case: the murdered girl was best friends with Brown's daughter. With a new testimony and with the murder weapon in hand, Ferguson gets a re-trial and is acquitted and thereafter freed from prison. Subsequently, the governor authorizes Sullivan's execution.
