Best movies like Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys

The defense and the prosecution have rested and the jury is filing into the jury room to decide if a young Spanish-American is guilty or innocent of murdering his father. What begins as an open and shut case soon becomes a mini-drama of each of the jurors' prejudices and preconceptions about the trial, the accused, and each other.

Janet Gregory, a single mother with a haunting past, is a paralegal struggling to overcome doubts about Calvin Willis, an African-American husband and father wrongfully accused of raping a neighborhood girl. Eventually convinced of his innocence, Janet takes Calvin's pro bono case and wages a dramatic and stormy 22-year battle with the justice system that ultimately redeems an unjustly accused man and cements a life-long friendship.

A tale of forbidden love and family drama unravels 40 years of secrets and lies against a soundtrack of juke joint blues in the Deep South.

A small southern town has just been rocked by a tragedy: a young woman has been violently raped. The white town fathers immediately declare that the attacker had to be black, and place the blame on Garth, a young black man. Assuming that the men in white sheets aren't intent on holding a fair and impartial trial, Garth takes to the woods as the Klansmen lynching party hunts him down.

A young black doctor sets out to establish a free clinic in Harlem.

A young single mother of four living in a small Texas town. Arrested during a drug raid and accused of a crime she didn't commit, Dee goes against the wishes of her mother, Alma, and rejects the plea-bargain that would free her from jail, but brand her as a felon for life. As word begins to spread that similar incidents are occurring in poor communities all across the country, Dee realizes that there are more mothers out there like her, and decides to take a stand against powerful district attorney Calvin Beckett. Now, despite being well aware of District Attorney Beckett's fierce reputation, Dee enlists the aid of ACLU attorney David Cohen and former narcotics officer Sam Conroy in overcoming the seemingly insurmountable obstacles that, if not navigated with the greatest of caution, now threaten to destroy her life. With the custody of her children on the line, one brave mother wages a valiant battle to strike at the very heart of the corrupt Texas justice system.

Semi-retired Michigan lawyer Paul Biegler takes the case of Army Lt. Manion, who murdered a local innkeeper after his wife claimed that he raped her. Over the course of an extensive trial, Biegler parries with District Attorney Lodwick and out-of-town prosecutor Claude Dancer to set his client free, but his case rests on the victim's mysterious business partner, who's hiding a dark secret.

A middle-aged married wealthy white corporate executive is surprised to discover that he has a working-class black teen-age son who wants to be adopted into the almost-exclusively-white upper-middle-class community of San Marino, California.

Suspected of murdering her best friend, a teenage computer-hacker goes on the run to find the real killer.

Daniel, a brilliant lawyer who is about to become one of the state's youngest judges, is driving with his fiancé Jenny when they hit another car. She wakes up to learn the other driver is dead and she's being charged with manslaughter. Before help arrived on the scene, Daniel shifted Jenny to the driver's seat to hide his culpability. Desperate to get her life back, Jenny sets out to convince the vengeful dead driver's wife that she's innocent--only to realize that Daniel is determined to keep the truth secret.

When a hard-working single mother, Sara Diaz, has her children taken from her after she is suspected of injuring her son, Ally Fisher, a recent law school graduate, is assigned to represent her case before Judge Martha Schulman, a veteran of the Family Court System.

Constellation chronicles the lives and loves of an African-American family in the deep South as they are forced to come to terms with a tumultuous past marked by an unrequited interracial affair. The film explores the way in which the family patriarch must confront his demons amidst the changing racial fabric of society and his own family.

Scout Finch, 6, and her older brother Jem live in sleepy Maycomb, Alabama, spending much of their time with their friend Dill and spying on their reclusive and mysterious neighbor, Boo Radley. When Atticus, their widowed father and a respected lawyer, defends a black man named Tom Robinson against fabricated rape charges, the trial and tangent events expose the children to evils of racism and stereotyping.

Based on a controversial French novel, Lila Says tells the story of a quiet young poet named Chimo who develops a crush on the pretty, blond Lila, a girl who recently moved into his Arab ghetto with her aunt. When the leader of a rival gang also falls for Lila, the ensuing love triangle initiates a journey of sexual discovery -- and sets off a chain of devastating events.

Madea dispenses her unique form of holiday spirit on rural town when she's coaxed into helping a friend pay her daughter a surprise visit in the country for Christmas.

Successful New York attorney Sam Leibowitz travels to the South in 1933 to defend nine young black men accused of raping two women on an Alabama freight train.

After a long time in the army, an Afro-American soldier returns to his hometown, where, years ago, his brother was executed for the rape and murder of two white girls. The commando believes his brother to have been innocent and seeks a proof for that, but there are some people in the town who will stop at nothing to hide the secrets of their past...

Set in nineteenth-century New Orleans, the story depicts the gens de couleur libre, or the Free People of Colour, a dazzling yet damned class caught between the world of white privilege and black oppression.

Shelby Coles (Halle Berry) is engaged to marry talented white jazz musician Meade Howell, but the pair face opposition from both Meade's family, who object to an inter-racial marriage, and Shelby's parents, who want her to marry a professional. As Shelby is afflicted by pre-marital doubts, handsome Lute McNeil arrives on the scene, determined to make Shelby his at any cost.

Black girl from rich family loves white boy from poor family.

A rape case opens racial divisions in a small town. A black sheriff and his white deputy investigate allegations that a wealthy white businessman raped a black college student.

A television movie set in Rockville, Georgia, in 1972. Major Kendall Laird, a Survival Assistance Officer, arrives in this sleepy little town with the body of Lieutenant Dwyte Johnson, a Vietnam war hero. It's Laird's job to help Johnson's parents bury their son. But since the dead hero was black, his parents are turned away by the white racists who maintain the town's "all-white" cemetery.

A pregnant white Southern girl and a black New York lawyer, both on the run in rural Texas, meet up in a boarded-up, abandoned house and realize they both need each other in order to survive.

Lily Covington, a Manhattan housekeeper, embarks on a trip to the rural Alabama town of her youth. To Lily's surprise, her employer's nine-year-old son Michael stows away for the ride. Together, Lily and Michael realize just how alike and how different their worlds really are. Michael explores a way of life he never knew existed, while Lily discovers some tender truths about the family she left behind.

A black soldier in World War II England begins an affair with a white woman whose husband is a soldier currently overseas in battle and in doubts of her relationship with him as she discovered he had been having an affair with his secretary.

New ranch owner Frank Madden, half Indian but posing as white, arrives just as an all white jury finds the three white Shipley brothers who lynched three Indians innocent. There is soon trouble between Frank and the Shipleys who are using Frank's land to graze their cattle. When the brother of one of the Indian victims kills a Shipley, Frank is accused and put in jail. The Shipleys then organize a lynch mob and head for the jail.

Investigative journalist Rae de Leon travels nationwide to uncover and examine a shocking pattern: Young women tell the police they’ve been sexually assaulted, but instead of finding justice, they’re charged with the crime of making a false report, arrested, and even imprisoned by the system they believed would protect them.

A Black night watchman at a chemical factory finds the body of a murdered white woman. After reporting it, he finds himself accused of the murder.

Set in tsarist Russia around the turn of the century and based on a true story of a Russian Jewish peasant Yakov Bog who was wrongly imprisoned for a most unlikely crime - the “ritual murder” of a Gentile child in Kiev. We witness the unrelenting detail of the peasant handyman's life in prison and see him gain in dignity as the efforts to humiliate him and make him confess fail.

After a brutal nighttime attack on a woman alone in her suburban home, police investigators zero in on teenager Eric Sutter. When the victim identifies Sutter as her attacker, the legal system closes in on the boy as friends, neighbors and the media turn against him. Only through the dogged determination of his mother, and her loyal boyfriend does Eric and the victim have a chance for justice to be served.

Set in the heart of America in the 1930s. Walter Osgood (Louis Gosset Jr) is the only black man left in the town of High Lonesome that has been cleared by the overwhelming white supremacist beliefs. Having lost his entire family to them and not knowing where his young Son is or whether he is alive is what sets this movie apart from others

A motel owner in Texas is accused of raping a civil-rights worker from Sweden.

The Lori Jackson Story - A civil rights campaigner, Lori Jackson, champions the the cause of a black marine convicted of rape, as she thinks he is innocent of the crime. Based on a real case.

A young woman graduates from a New York City law school, returns to her small hometown, and finds her first case is defending a childhood friend accused of murder. Director Lewis Seiler's 1936 courtroom drama stars Claire Trevor, Isabel Jewell, Michael Whalen, Gene Lockhart, Eric Linden, Charles Middleton, Edward Brophy, Kathleen Lockhart, Guinn Williams, El Brendel, Sterling Holloway, Ray Brown, Howard Hickman, Frank McGlynn Sr., Charles Waldron Sr., Spencer Charters and Eily Malyon.

A look at the infamous "Scottsboro Boys" case that occurred in Alabama in 1931, in which nine young black men were arrested, tried and quickly convicted in the rape of two white women, despite overwhelming evidence that showed their accusers had falsely accused them and the fact that one of the women later admitted that no rape had in fact occurred (although both had had sexual relations with their boyfriends on the day prior to the "rape"). The case was one of the first that shined a spotlight on what many called the "legal lynchings" that occurred in the South whenever blacks were accused of crimes, especially against whites and most especially against white women.