In Chicago in 1932, during Prohibition, a policeman is murdered inside a speakeasy. Frank Wiecek (Richard Conte) and another man are quickly arrested, and, in November 1933, are each convicted and sentenced to serve 99 years imprisonment for the killing.

Eleven years later, Wiecek's mother, Tillie Wiecek (Kasia Orzazewski), puts a classified ad in the Chicago Times offering a $5,000 reward for information about the true killers of the police officer. This leads the paper's city editor, Brian Kelly (Lee J. Cobb), to assign reporter P. J. McNeal (James Stewart) to look more closely into the case. McNeal is skeptical at first, believing Wiecek to be guilty. But he starts to change his mind, and meets increased resistance from the police and the state's attorney's office, who are unwilling to be proved wrong. This is quickly followed by political pressure from the state capital, where politicians are anxious to end a story that might prove embarrassing to the administration.

Eventually, Wiecek is proved innocent by, among other things, the enlarging of a photograph showing the date on a newspaper that proves that a key witness statement was false. (In actuality, innocence was determined not as claimed in the film but when it was found out that the prosecution had suppressed the fact that the main witness had initially declared that she could not identify the two men involved in the police shooting.)

A 1948 American Black & White reality-based newspaper drama film directed by Henry Hathaway, produced by Otto Lang and Darryl F. Zanuck, screenplay by Jerome Cady and Jay Dratler, adaptation by Leonard Hoffman and Quentin Reynolds, based on the 1944 Chicago Daily Times articles by reporters James P. McGuire and Jack McPhaul, cinematography by Joseph MacDonald, starring James Stewart, Richard Conte, Lee J. Cobb, Helen Walker, Betty Garde, Michael Chapin, Howard Smith, Moroni Olsen, J.M. Kerrigan, Paul Harvey, George Tyne, Leonarde Keeler, and E. G. Marshall. Screen debut appearances of John McIntire, Joanne De Bergh, and Kasia Orzazewski.

Narrated by Truman Bradley. The man administering the polygraph test to convict Richard Conte was the inventor of the polygraph or lie detector machine, Leonarde Keeler. He played himself in the movie.

Based on Joseph Majczek, who was wrongly convicted of the murder of a Chicago policeman in 1932, one of the worst years of organized crime during Prohibition. After being released from prison in 1945, Majczek worked as an insurance agent in Chicago. For his wrongful imprisonment, the State of Illinois awarded him twenty-four thousand dollars, which Majczek gave to his mother Tillie. Majczek eventually remarried his wife, with whom he had divorced while he was in prison. His last years were spent in a mental institution. He died in 1983.

In 1946 James McGuire and Karin Walsh, the real-life people on whom Jimmy Stewart's and Lee J. Cobbs's characters were respectively based, won the prestigious Heywood Broun Award for excellence in investigative journalism for the Chicago Times for "stories helping free a man wrongly convicted of murder."

The Chicago Daily Times merged with the Chicago Sun in 1948, the year this movie was released, and became known as the Chicago Sun-Times.

James P. McGuire served as a Technical Advisor on this film. He is the Chicago Times reporter who wrote the articles on which this film is based, and was the basis of the character played by James Stewart.

This film won The Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Motion Picture Screenplay in 1949.

This was the first Hollywood-produced feature film to be shot entirely on-location in Chicago. Views of the Merchandise Mart as well as Holy Trinity Polish Mission can be seen throughout the film. A scene filmed at the Stateville Penitentiary shows the interior of the so-called "Roundhouse," a "panopticon" cell block built according to a design originated by English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The "Roundhouse" where Frank Wiecek (Richard Conte) is kept at the Stateville prison was the only remaining panopticon still in use in the United States in the 1990s. It was closed in 2016, but the structure remains, due to its historical significance.

"The Screen Guild Theater" broadcast a 30-minute radio adaptation of the movie on October 7, 1948, with James Stewart and Richard Conte reprising their film roles.

When McNeal tries to convince Zaleska to take the blame for the murder to exonerate Wiecek, Zaleska asks if he should name "Joe Doakes" as his partner. At the time, Joe Doakes was another name for "Joe Blow" or "John Doe."

It reached number one at the US box office in its 3rd week of release with a gross of $500,000 from 17 cities.

The N.Y Sun, "Calls for three cheers from every working newspaper man and, for that matter, for at least two from every moviegoer."

A great newspaper caper noir. An engaging movie about injustice and redemption. By far the best documentary-style movie for its time.