Top 250 Movies Like Me Declaro Culpable

Up and coming young lawyer Anthony Lawrence faces several ethical and emotional dilemmas as he climbs the Philadelphia social ladder. His personal and professional skills are tested as he tries to balance the needs of his fiance Joan, the expectations of his colleagues and his own obligation to defend his friend Chester on a murder count.

Victorian melodrama gets a big send-up in this spoof production of the old play "The Drunkard; or, The Fallen Saved." The play within the movie is the old one where evil villain Cribbs schemes to get his lusty clutches on the heroine by driving her naive husband to alcoholic ruin. Luckily, a temperance lecturer is on hand to set things straight, as is the great Buster Keaton as the drunkard's friend.

Joan is loved by a young man of the village and they are married. In a few weeks the husband, a soldier, is sent to the war-front along with his three brothers. Word is received that her husband has been killed in battle and Joan's first impulse is suicide by she is pregnant and her prospective motherhood makes her realize her new responsibility. The military authorities start a movement to get the young women of the country to marry departing soldiers, so that the empire may have another generation of fighting men. Word is received that the King is to pass through their village and Joan organizes the women in a general protest against the war. She leads them all, dressed in black, in a long procession to meet the Monarch. The soldiers threaten to shoot her unless she turns the women back, buy Joan comes face-to-face with the ruler and kills herself, as her message from the women that they refuse to make another generation victims of a ruthless militarism.

Mako is a neglectful husband. Not the most loving man. His wife gradually encounters a widower who is a kind, gentle figure. She eventually makes the transition to leave her husband and go to this fellow.

In 1850, on the isolated French island of Saint-Pierre, a murder shocks the natives. Two fishermen are arrested. One of them, Louis Ollivier, dies in custody. The other, Neel Auguste, is sentenced to death by the guillotine. The island is so small that it has neither a guillotine nor an executioner. While those are sent for Auguste is placed under the supervision of an army Captain.

John Warriner, facing financial ruin, accepts the proposal of a bootlegger, Benedict, to underwrite the business of illegal wine-selling. His daughter, Angela, takes up with the jazz set and is caught in a raid, at a cafe owned by Benedict. Her former sweetheart, Carl Graham, comes to the rescue and saves her from notoriety, while the family struggles back to its former respectability following Warriner's prison term.

A merciless district attorney prosecutes a case that mirrors his own life.

A poor neighborhood in Mexico City. Carpenter Pepe el Toro lives peacefully with his daughter Chachita while woos the pretty Celia, but tragedy knocks his door when he is falsely accused of having perpetrated a felony.

A devilish Southern woman, married to a man who despises her, manages to manipulate those around her under the guise of being kind. But, when her sister-in-law is engaged to be married to the woman's former lover and her husband starts up an affair with her cousin, visting from New York, things start to go awry and she sets a plan to destroy it all.

Set at the turn of the 20th century, The Railway Children tells the story of three Edwardian children and their mother who move to a country house in Yorkshire after their father is mysteriously taken away by the police.

In the aftermath of the Great Plague and amidst the subsequent witch-hunts against women, a young widow grapples with the tragic death of her husband in a society completely consumed by fear and death. Because she rejects the advances of her landlord, she is falsely accused of being a witch and thrown in jail for a crime she didn’t commit. She must endure physical persecution at the hands of England’s most ruthless witch-hunter and face her own inner demons as the devil himself starts to work his way into her mind.

A police detective finds himself entangled in the web of the underworld when he falls in love with a nightclub singer accused of murdering a crooked lawyer.

Adam is a young American wrongly accused of being an accomplice to murder while on shore leave in Liverpool. He is sentenced to death by hanging but the sentence is commuted to twenty years in a convict settlement in Australia.

British documentarian Nick Broomfield creates a follow-up piece to his 1992 documentary of the serial killer Aileen Wuornos, a highway prostitute who was convicted of killing six men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. Interviewing an increasingly mentally unstable Wuornos, Broomfield captures the distorted mind of a murderer whom the state of Florida deems of sound mind -- and therefore fit to execute. Throughout the film, Broomfield includes footage of his testimony at Wuornos' trial.

During WWII, industrialist Joe Keller commits a crime and frames his business partner Herbert Deever. Years later, his sin comes back to haunt him when Joe's son plans to marry Deever's daughter.

Duke Berne, former big shot but now a three-time loser, fears returning to crime because a fourth conviction will mean a life sentence. Finally, haunted by his past and goaded by his cohorts, he joins in planning an armoured car robbery.

Australia, 1958. When a nine year old white girl is found murdered, police are quick to arrest illiterate Aborigine, Max Stuart. Under interrogation Max admits to the killing. With a legal system compromised by intimidation tactics, the skills of his two gifted but naïve defense lawyers are put to the test.

A terminally ill mother invites her family to their country house for one final gathering, but tensions quickly boil over between her two daughters.

An ambitious Mexican-American gets mixed up with the neurotic wife of his casino boss.

This is not a Clara Bow vehicle, and yet it is clearly the aspect/asset of Clara Bow which elevates a fairly serious melodrama to a timeless and profound social statement. Opening the film on death row where the handsome youth awaits the chair, a stirring test of the legal system evolves after two elite types conspire to expose its inadequacies. Elite, jaded society lawyer Gordon Harrington fabricates a murder, implicating an entirely "hired" fall-guy, one Dan O'Connor, while the bored playboy-type hides away on a yacht until the points are proven and the legal system has been disgraced. Naturally, something goes wrong, the playboy really turns up murdered, and O'Connor is now the accused, imprisoned murderer scheduled to be hanged.

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.

Newlywed Monica is committed to a mental hospital for hallucinations, but soon finds out that her husband has a devious plan to steal her life, including her daughter.

A woman is the prime suspect in the mysterious drowning death of her anchorwoman sister.

Elizabeth Chase is busy remodeling her new home with her lawyer husband, Paul and daughter, McKenzie. To make sure it's finished before a charity event they're hosting, the couple hire a contractor, Javier, to help. However Elizabeth starts to grow suspicious of Javier and learns that he'd targeted the family all along. Now, to save her family, Elizabeth will have to take matters into her own hands.

A supernatural tale set on death row in a Southern prison, where gentle giant John Coffey possesses the mysterious power to heal people's ailments. When the cell block's head guard, Paul Edgecomb, recognizes Coffey's miraculous gift, he tries desperately to help stave off the condemned man's execution.

Tom Masterick, a dock worker, is wrongfully convicted of a murder charge. His death sentence is commuted to a long prison term. When released as an old man, he vows to find the real killer.

A war widow falls in love with the man who informed her of her husband's death.

A penniless composer marries a young widow with a baby—even though he is in love with his brother's fiancée.

Frank Perry is an institutionalized convict twelve years into a life sentence without parole. When his estranged daughter falls ill, he is determined to make peace with her before it's too late. He develops an ingenious escape plan, and recruits a dysfunctional band of escapists - misfits with a mutual dislike for one other but united by their desire to escape their hell hole of an existence.

When a law-abiding woman gets indicted for murdering her husband, her lawyer soon realizes that a larger conspiracy may be at work.

Pat Carlsson is a 14-year-old Swedish schoolgirl who though very young is very streetwise as she offers sex, for a price, to middle-aged attorney John Berg who can not resist the young girl. What starts as an immoral sexual escape, becomes a nightmare of tragedy and deception involving blackmail, kidnapping and murder.

Attorney Anthony Keane agrees to represent Londonite Mrs. Paradine, who has been fingered in her husband's murder. From the start, the married lawyer is drawn to the enigmatic beauty, and he begins to cast about for a way to exonerate his client. Keane puts the Paradine household servant on the stand, suggesting he is the killer. But Keane soon loses his way in the courtroom, and his half-baked plan sets off a stunning chain of events.

A gang of career criminals plots the robbery of an armored car company's headquarters. Although the robbery itself goes off as planned, it's not long before the gang members are fighting among themselves over everybody's share of the loot and trying to avoid capture by the police, who are pouring all their resources into capturing the robbers. Based on a real-life 1950 Brinks Armored Car Co. robbery in Boston.

Small town lawyer, Harmon Cobb, defends a Nazi prisoner of war against murder charges. Set during World War II, Cobb has to contend with the difficulties of defending the devil when the town's only doctor (Barnard Hughes) dies while at "Camp Bremen" in the fictitious town of Bremen, Colorado.

A young mother is plagued by a tragic mistake and alienates her little boy. A brilliant writer is released from prison after serving a 15-year sentence and begins working at Vic's Diner. Their stories converge when the man must overcome obstacles of the past to save the little boy and ultimately himself.

Two men in 1930s Mississippi become friends after being sentenced to life in prison together for a crime they did not commit.

A single mother in New Mexico senses her own death in the hands of a mysterious stalker.

A silent romantic love triangle crime melodrama about a man who gets out of prison after ten years and discovers that his wife has divorced him and married the man who sent him to prison. Worse yet, she fears he will want to exact revenge, so she sets up her new husband to frame her first husband, so he will be sent back to prison!

After fifteen years of marriage, an affluent couple divorce and take up with new partners.

Based on a true story, Barbara Hershey and Morgan Weisser portray two star crossed lovers who will stop at nothing to be together without any ridicule. "Stay the Night" tells the dark tale of the controversial romance of a small town teenage boy named Michael Kettman and a free-spirited older woman named Jimmie Sue Finger, who suffers from an abusive marriage. Jimmie Sue and her younger lover plot to murder her husband, which leads to either eternal bliss for the both of them or a curse on their relationship.

It's a tale of power and passions when a Russian siren, who wants the finer things in life, sinks her hooks into a judge, a decadent aristocrat and an estate superintendent, with surprising results.

A gangster's widow fights for love despite society's disapproval.

In Kentucky just after the Civil War, the Hayden-Colby feud leads to Jed Colby being sent to prison for 15 years for murder. The Haydens head for Nevada and when Colby gets out of prison he heads there also seeking revenge. The head of the Hayden family tries to avoid more killing but the inevitable showdown has to occur, complicated by Lynn Hayden and Ellen Colby's plans to marry.

A drama centered around the relationship between journalist Michael Finkel and Christian Longo, an FBI Most Wanted List murderer who for years lived outside the U.S. under Finkel's name.

A sudden loss disrupts Carol’s orderly life, propelling her into the dating world for the first time in 20 years. Finally living in the present tense, she finds herself swept up in not one, but two unexpected relationships that challenge her assumptions about what it means to grow old.

Julie Thompson, a young conservative Christian woman, is truly tested by God and gives birth to a child conceived in rape. This decision leads her on a journey that forces her to explore and redefine her relationships with God, her family, friends and even her rapist Mike Connor, as she struggles to forgive the man who violated her by boldly visiting him in prison and forging an unlikely bond.

David is a nurse who works with terminally ill patients. Dedicated to his profession, he develops strong relationships with the people he cares for. But outside of work, it's a different story altogether.

A Swedish settler (David Brian) starts a war when he tries to drive Dakotas off their Wyoming reservation.

A dying man frames himself for murder so his widow can collect the reward.

Officer Daniel Harding is a distinguished member of the K-9 police unit. His partner and best friend is Ace, a police dog. When Ace is accused of mauling a suspect, an overzealous DA convinces police authorities that Ace should be euthanized.

John Howard Payne leaves home and begins a career in the theater. Despite encouragement from his mother and his sweetheart, Payne begins to lead a life of dissolute habits, and this soon leads to ruin and misery. In deep despair, he thinks of better days, and writes a song that later provides inspiration to several others in their own times of need.

After mercifully killing her terminally ill lover, Dr. Christine Allison loses her medical license and spends two years in prison. Once she has completed her sentence, the lawyer who prosecuted Christine, Stephen Dane, hires her to care for his emotionally unstable wife, Liane. Christine takes the job, but when Liane's allegedly dead father reappears, Christine sets out to reveal the family's dark secrets.

An intimate portrait of three young afghan women accused of committing "moral crimes."

Mirian Wilkins, the teenage daughter of Senator Wilkins, starts a Society for the Rehabilitation of Criminals and, without the approval or knowledge of her father, elects him to the position of honorary president. When the family's new gardener, Baxter, turns out to be a notorious ex-convict who was sentenced to prison by Senator Wilkins when he was a judge, Wilkins considers firing him until his daughter points out that would be an unwise decision considering the position her father held on society.

Bob Terry is in love with Lois Borden the daughter of his employer, John Borden. When some bonds are missing from the office, Bob is accused and because of Borden's strong sense of obligation to his stockholders, Bob is railroaded to prison. A few years later, the real thief is apprehended and Bob is released. He now begins his plan for revenge against Borden with the aid of his prison cell mate Todd and a gangster, John Carmody. Soon, some bonds are missing again and Borden knows Bob is involved but because Bob has suffered at his hands before, Borden assumes the responsibility and is about to be sentenced to prison. Todd is shot while trying to steal the bonds back from Carmody, but gets the bonds back to Bob and, before he dies, begs Bob to return them to the owner.

After a ten year absence, acclaimed filmmaker Molly Dineen is back with a new feature documentary: Being Blacker; an intimate portrait of Jamaican-born reggae producer, businessman, father, son and prominent community figure, Blacker Dread. 40 years after featuring in Dineen’s first film, Blacker and his family, friends and community in South London face the combined challenges of rapid social change, gentrification, inequality, poverty, crime and racism as they seek to secure their futures. Made with intimacy and warmth, the film takes us deep into Blacker’s world as he buries his mother, closes his business and faces prison for the first time. Being Blacker offers a rarely-heard perspective on life in Britain today.

John and Tilly's happy marriage is ruined when Tilly's father finds out about the scandalous past of John's mother. John, unaware of his father-in-law's meddling, thinks Tilly has left him, and he leaves town. Her father leads Tilly to believe that John has died in an accident, and he pushes her to marry someone else.

Victoria marries David, the man of her dreams. After a number of years and two children, the marriage turns out not to be what she had expected. Then she discovers her faith, and everything turns out for the best. In several scenes Victoria has visions of love and marriage throughout history: she appears in the Stone Age, with a tribe of Amazonians, in the Middle Ages and in the Roman era.

In the early 1900's Tennessee, a loving family undergoes the shock of the father's sudden, accidental death. The widow and her young son must endure the heartache of life following the tragedy, but slowly rise up from the ashes to face the hope of renewed life.

"By No Means" depicts a recurrent family drama. An ambitious husband travels a lot. Wife, left alone, seeks fulfillment outside the marriage. The antique glass vase shatters. The marriage fractured, a replica of the vase becomes a clue.

Mark A. Lewis's tragic-comic adventure ILL FATED plunges the viewer into the boxed-in world of Jimmy, a small-town teen who seeks a better life but who sees dead-end signs at every turn out of town. His vague plan to leave and "look into college" is complicated by a revolving door of small-town complications - the demands of his lumpen best friends, his troubled girlfriend, his promiscuous stepmother and cuckolded stepfather. But the biggest complication of all is the return of his womanizing biological dad Earl, who'd fled in Jimmy's infancy after impregnating the wife of a violent convict (also his best friend). Earl's return is a catalyst to disaster, and a palette for director Lewis to paint a hyper-realist picture of small-town dystopia.

A steelworker and his aspiring wife make millions when they become partners in a dyeworks. Unfortunately, success does not bring happiness.

It is 1995. The summer when the war operation Storm will take place. Boro, who is going to be forty in a year and a half, with his wife Jasna and son Luka goes to his home village Drinovci, Herzegovina, after seven years. He wants to see his brother who managed to leave Sarajevo with his family. Boro knew that his brother was wounded, but when he sees him after many years, he discovers that the brother will spend the rest of his life in wheel chair. Boro constantly fights with Jasna, and he doesn't speak at all to his father Pako, whom he blames for his mother's death. In two weeks in August 1995, Boro will solve the years long dispute with his father, he will learn to be a better husband and a father.

A quiet painter, separated from his wife for a year, receives a suitcase in the mail from his mother, whom he hasn't seen since infancy. He believes she abandoned him to his wealthy, paternal grandparents. The suitcase contains mementos and a diary, a long letter to him, written over the years, with details of her youth, her first job as a pianist at a cinema, the coming of talkies, her marriage, and how he came to live with his grandparents. As he reads through the materials and her story comes to life, his son Antoine, who's about 10 or 12, tries to break through his father's silence and sorrow by taking matters into his own hands.

An ex-convict who is on parole is accused of murdering a loose woman in the town where he works.

Saloon singer Aurora is sentenced to two years in prison for a prostitution conviction. When she gets out of prison, she gets romantically involved with Alejandro Luque, the respected judge who tried her case. Aurora and her boyfriend, el Rizos, plan to blackmail the judge. But Aurora gets a change of heart as she comes to know the judge better.

A crime boss tries to cause a riot and prison break while behind bars.

Based partially on the story of Bonnie and Clyde, Eddie Taylor is an ex-convict who cannot get a break after being released from prison. When he is framed for murder, Taylor is forced to flee with his wife Joan Graham and baby. While escaping prison after being sentenced to death, Taylor becomes a real murderer, condemning himself and Joan to a life of crime and death on the road.

When a distant emergency disrupts a vacation in Acapulco, simmering tensions rise to the fore between scions of a wealthy British family.

An actress becomes taken with Hitty, a young orphan prone to dreaming. Julie soon finds out that she is ill and has only a short time to live. She decides to adopt the child so that her husband Bill will not be alone when she dies. Unfortunately, Bill is not charmed by Hitty.

A man kills his terminally ill wife to prevent her further suffering.

A high living society playboy marries a nightclub singer, and she soon realizes that, though they're genuinely in love, the husband's endless partying completely dominates and is destroying their marriage.

A TV adaptation of the classic Alexandre Dumas novel. Edmond Dantes is falsely accused by those jealous of his good fortune, and is sentenced to spend the rest of his life in the notorious island prison, Chateau d'If. While imprisoned, he meets the Abbe Faria, a fellow prisoner whom everyone believes to be mad. The Abbe tells Edmond of a fantastic treasure hidden away on a tiny island, that only he knows the location of. After many years in prison, the old Abbe dies, and Edmond escapes disguised as the dead body. Now free, Edmond must find the treasure the Abbe told him of, so he can use the new-found wealth to exact revenge on those who have wronged him.

It is about a loving couple which trying to make a living in 1951 Florida. When they are arrested, for a crime they didn't commit. The pair are given long jail terms and ripped from their children, so they begin a stunning fight for justice that has them facing the ruthless sheriff responsible for their incarceration.

A London businessman concocts an intricate plan to murder his unfaithful wife for her money.

Another attempt to bring the 1960s primetime serial back to network television

A beautiful Cuban-American lawyer is caught in the greatest dilemma of her life stay with Ariel, her Cuban-American husband who is eager to start a family at any cost or reignite a past love with Luther, the romance of her life who unexpectedly returns to try and capture her heart once again. Set against the backdrop of one hot summer in the sultry city of Miami, this romantic comedy examines the lives and loves of Margarita Santos, a contemporary woman and her two best friends (Anabel and Viviana) as they straddle two cultures to navigate through the dilemmas they face to find love and happiness once again.

Over the course of a day in a California hospice, three terminally ill patients are observed with their families reflecting on life and death.

Televangelist Bobby Paradise "saw God" in some space debris when he was returning to Earth as an astronaut. Or at least he was convinced he did by his wife, a Cape Canaveral groupie at the time Bobby was with NASA. Now they have built up an extensive TV empire. When their proposal to merge with a somewhat tarnished mogul is investigated by the government, skeletons in the Paradise closet come to light and the family either rallies behind or disparages the enterprise.

Ryan Travers has just been released from a prison in Bangkok, Thailand, after serving a five-year sentence for murder. His parents, running an antique shop in the area while waiting for their son to be released, are killed in an explosion perpetrated by the local mob after refusing to pay protection money. Ryan's news go from bad to worse when he learns his sister Katie is seriously ill and will need an operation. With only a dead end job at a construction site after his release, Ryan learns about a local underground fight ring and decides to enter to raise the money for his sister's medical fees and search vengeance.

A young woman's husband has been imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. In order to be near him to try to help him get his sentence overturned, she moves into a boardinghouse near the prison whose residents are the wives of inmates.

The dramatic story of a normal, intelligent man of good principles driven to contemplate thoughts of murder.

Greed, ambition and hunger-for-power drive John Hart, a New-York-City stock-market broker, into crooked dealings and deception, but he doesn't realize that those he ruined will seek vengeance. He meets his match and downfall when his path crosses with a reporter, Phil Stuart; a girl, Marcia Harper, and a man-with-a-gun from a family he ruined.

When a defense lawyer's adulterous husband becomes the prime suspect in the murder of the woman he was cheating with, his wife chooses to defend him. Can she overcome his betrayal while searching for the truth?

Nora Mason becomes entangled in a family mix-up of murder and scandal that threatens to ruin her career and entire future; Unless the mother she does not know can find a way to save her.

Parisot, a French spy in World War 1, returns home on a secret mission to visit his mother, and finds that Victoria, the wife of a German general, is billeted in the Parisot home while waiting to see her husband. Victoria discovers that Paul is a spy and, although fascinated by him, plans to reveal his identity to her husband. When the latter is unable to visit her, she attempts to go to the German army headquarters.

When a woman is wrongly accused of the death of her ex-husband, she sets out to solve the murder mystery and find the real killer before the day of the funeral, when she is to be taken into custody.

An ex-convict (Robert Beltran) and his lover (Julie Carmen) plot to kill her husband (Guy Boyd), owner of a nightclub in east Los Angeles.

Colonel Maurice Taylor of the Royal Flying Corps is hopelessly injured in an airplane crash immediately following his marriage to Stella. Maurice is non-functional in most of the physical areas of marriage that count, but Stella attends to his other needs faithfully for three years. Then his brother, Colin, shows up from South America, and he and Stella fall passionately in love and are making plans to run away together. Mother Taylor is aware of the romance, as is Nurse Weyland, who is secretly in love with Maurice, and now hates Stella for her careless attitude toward Maurice's patiently-borne sufferings. Maurice is also aware of the affair. He has a talk with his wife and brother. Complications arise.

A lay-about falls for his best friend's fiancee. The two of them run away from a life of privilege to one of middle-class normalcy. When an influx of money enters their life, their differences come to light.

A bank teller's love life falls apart when he's accused of embezzling.

A woman inherits a fortune, causing her husband and his lover to plot her demise by poisoning her. The only trouble is it only places her in a deep coma that resembles death. When an accident occurs in the embalmer's office he doesn't complete the embalming process, causing her to be buried alive. Awakening from the grave, she claws her way out and seeks revenge against the two who caused her supposed demise

The scheme of a pair of married con artists goes awry when their victim dies, and they are both caught and imprisoned. When she gets out of prison, she tries to put her life back together.

Miniature Dwyer is named after her mother, who was making miniature doll houses when Minnie was born. Minnie, too, has built doll houses for years, and when she learns that she is terminally ill, she and her husband Teddy begin planning their joint suicide. She makes sure that her dolls are placed with people who will appreciate and cherish them. The couple refuse to allow their grief-stricken daughter or the solicitous social worker or anyone else to forestall the death they are determined is right for them

Rosario and Carlos, husbands, are part of a theater company. In a scene of jealousy, she should shoot and kill him. Carlos has had an affair with Zulma, another acriz of the company. On opening day, in the final scene, Rosario accidentally kills her husband. Someone change the gun ...

On the verge of dying, Maria gives her son to Dolores, her maid, and asks her to not give him to the boy's father who abandoned her because Maria didn't want to interrupt the pregnancy. Time after, Luis (the father) returns from abroad with his wife, after seeing Dolores with the child, he understands that is his son. Dolores tries to escape with the boy but she's captured. The boy tries to kill his father which makes Luis understand that the boy suffers for Dolores. She is liberated and allowed to live with the child.

In this brutal prison drama a hen-pecked husband is sentenced to prison after getting caught with his hand in the company till. He is sent to a high-rise facility in LA. It seems the fellow was only following the instructions of his domineering, constantly nagging wife who, as soon as he is put away, takes up with a more successful businessman. This causes her new lover's ex-lover to get insanely jealous and kill the conniving wife.

A man wrongly accused of a crime must decide between getting involved in a prison break, or remaining in jail until his wife can prove his innocence.

Early '30s comedy-mystery involving magicians, fake psychics and murder.

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.