in the heat of the night

 

'In the heat of the night' Film.. Takes place in the Jim Crow south in 1967 .. the movie begins with a white cop finding a man lying dead on the ground while on patrol. Later the cop walks into a building and finds a random black man, he takes his wallet and brings him down to the police station for no reason. suspicious of the money that he found. The man's name was Virgil tibson. he was awaiting the train to the north, where he is from. he happened to be in the south. 

Virgil came in on the 12:35 from Brownsville to visit his mother.. the sheriff tried to pin the murder of the white man on Virgil. come to find out Virgil was a police officer from Philadelphia Pennsylvania, that works 10 hours a day 7 days a week, and that's how he earned the money. He made the sheriff call his chief and the chief suggested he help them.. he was the #1 homicide expert. The sheriff had him look at the body of the dead man, and what he observed was that the information they had on the dead body was incorrect. the sheriff left him with the body to go handle a different case (a runaway suspect) who they believed killed the man. the sheriff ended up catching the suspect, while Virgil back with the body had to inform the mans wife that he had died. Virgil didn't believe the man they caught was was the actual killer because he found that the killer was right handed, and the suspect they caught was left handed. The cops didn't care and tried to frame the suspect, Virgil didn't want to do so.. he kept the evidence that he collected in order to turn it in to the FBI personally, so the sheriff locked him up with the suspect for "withholding evidence" while in the cell Virgil talked to the suspect, and the suspect told him that he was innocent, he had an alibi and said that he only found the dead man after he was already dead.  The sheriff came back downstairs and gave him a wavier for false arrest... Virgil told him the rest of what he found, which was that the suspects alibi was legit, and that the dead body was moved after he actually died, and then he headed home on a train to Philadelphia. The wife of the dead man expressed that she wanted Virgil on the case beings as though if it wasn't for him the sheriff would still have the wrong man behind bars. 

The mayor convinced the sheriff to get Virgil on the case because if he fails then it would be the wife's fault and if he succeeds the sheriff would get credit for it because Virgil has no police power out there. Virgil wanted to go home but the sheriff ended up convincing him to stay. Peers of the chief believe that Virgil is going to get himself killed.  Virgil continued work, searching for any evidence he could find about the murder, he found a suspect, a rich white man. but staying in the south became dangerous for Virgil, confederates began searching for him, wanting to kill him and the mayor was pushing the sheriff to send Virgil home. but Virgil was persistent on finding  the murderer no matter how dangerous it was or how much the sheriff encourages him to go home. The sheriff became suspicious that one of his officers (the one that found mr. covert) killed the man, he didn't really have any evidence, but he locked him up anyway because he was pressured to make a quick arrest, and get Virgil home on his way.. 

Virgil didn't necessarily agree with the sheriffs arrest of his own officer, he believed another man committed the crime.  the sheriff extended Virgil's stay a couple of days.. and on the second day he ultimately gave him until the 3rd morning.  The sheriff somewhat came to care about Virgil although he was negro. White men around the town continued searching for Virgil in attempt to find and kill him. Virgil found a woman who was doing illegal abortions, which was the connect to everything that happened, she was attending the woman who had the baby of the murderer whom they've been looking for. The confederates ending up finding Virgil, but once Virgil told them everything that happened they turned on each other because the man murderer got the little sister pregnant of one of the confederates. They shot and killed each other. Now that Virgil had helped find the murderer, he went on his way back home on a train to Philadelphia.