Rules of Evidence

Raymond Boudro, San Antonio's best black criminal lawyer, has publicly branded white police detective Mike Stennett a racist. But now Boudro has accepted Stennett as a client, with one warning: The truth or I ruin you. Stennett is accused of beating a black drifter to death; an eyewitness claims to have seen the whole thing. With his own hard-won reputation at stake, and a client even other cops distrust, Boudro is driven by a gut feeling for justice. Even Stennett, he believes, would not stubbornly insist he is innocent against such odds unless something in this perplexing case were not what it seemed to be.

Combing through the evidence, working his network of childhood buddies, informers, and dealers on San Antonio's east side, Boudro unearths a witness who can probably determine the outcome of the trial. But he still has nagging doubts about his client's character and his plea. As the curtain rises on the courtroom drama, the stage is set for a double and deadly duel--not simply Prosecution v. Defense, but a community's volatile emotions v. the raw and shattering truth.