A man on trial for a violent crime attacks a sheriff's deputy and obtains a gun. He then stalks the courthouse, guns down the judge at his trial, a court reporter, and another sheriff's deputy, and makes his escape before a police dragnet can close around him. Even as the news of Brian Nichols' attack at the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta recedes into memory, the questions of how and why he was able to do it still reverberate.

The questions are even more acute in light of the attack just 11 days earlier at the home of Federal Judge Susan Lefkow in Chicago that left her husband and mother dead. Three appellate judges in Texas who were ambushed by a gun-wielding madman 13 years ago come together for the first time in the courtroom where they were attacked, to share their memories and what has happened since then.