With just a short time before retirement, Tampa FBI chief Joseph Fermi is suddenly confronted with his most complicated investigation ever. Attorneys and judges in the Tampa area are being murdered and evidence points to the killer being someone working for Fermi or someone close to him. While the media and the Justice Department single out Fermi for not solving the crimes soon enough, the murders go nationwide. Fermi is handed the responsibility of organizing the nationwide hunt for the mastermind killer, who apparently is singling out criminal lawyers and lenient judges. The murders become so horrific that many judges and lawyers go into hiding, throwing the legal process into chaos. Organized crime figures, inconvenienced by the lack of criminal lawyers, threaten Fermi for not trying hard enough and organize their own search for the mastermind killer. With the race between the FBI and the Mob to bring their own version of justice to the killer, legal experts declare that if the murders are not stopped soon, the American justice system will collapse.  Fermi is caught between the legal process, the rush for conviction, and his own conscience and begins to wonder himself what his real intentions are.