Judge Garth is convinced to go to Arapaho, Wyoming, by Roseanna Dobie (Joan Blondell), an old friend. Her son is dead and although it is claimed he had died when thrown off a horse, actually, an old friend of the Judge's, rancher/lawyer Frank Sturgis (John Dehner), had led a group of 13 men who had lynched John Dobie for allegedly beating to death a young woman who had rejected his advances. Roseanna (Joan Blondell) claims her son's innocence and demands his name be cleared by an "after the fact" trial. To clear their names and consciences, the Judge manages to get Sturgis to be the prosecutor and to participate in a "trial" with the 12 others involved in the lynching, including the dead girl's father, as the jury and the Judge as defence attorney.