Upon receiving a message from death row inmate "Dapper Dan" Malloy (Michael Ames (actor)), "Scoop" Conner (George Meeker), top investigative reporter for the ''Morning News'', visits him in prison and learns that before he is to die in the electric chair the following day, Malloy intends to incriminate some top officials complicit in corruption and the murder of the district attorney for which Malloy and his criminal associate "Mile-Away" Gordon (Roland Drew) were sentenced. Trying to prevent the exposure, Malloy's lawyer Bill Burgen (Douglas Wood), himself a member of the corrupt clique, falsely comforts Malloy with the claim that the governor will pardon him after first commuting the sentence to life imprisonment during a radio speech.