Shepherds and Butchers

South Africa, 1987. When Leon, a white 19-year-old prison guard, commits an inexplicable act of violence, killing seven black men in a hail of bullets, the outcome of the trial, and the court’s sentence, seems a foregone conclusion.

Hotshot lawyer John Weber reluctantly takes on the seemingly unwinnable case. A passionate opponent of the death penalty, John discovers that young Leon worked on death row in the nation’s most notorious prison, under traumatic conditions, befriending the inmates over the years while having to assist in their eventual executions. As the court hearings progress, the case offers John the opportunity to put the entire system of legally-sanctioned murder on trial.