I Killed Sam is inspired by the true story of a ground-breaking defense of a Flint woman who killed her abusive husband in the mid-1950s—a time when a husband could rape his wife in Michigan without facing criminal charges.
Trial attorney Bob Steadman, 93, was inspired to write I Killed Sam, based on his ground-breaking defense of a battered woman in 1957, when most of the country accepted and supported spouse abuse. Despite the long, legal odds, the fictional attorney Bob Nichols tries a never-before-tried-strategy of positing a dual defense, which, on the surface, appears contradictory: self-defense and temporary insanity. This fictionalized account of the Flint, Michigan, trial is more than a legal trial, replete with unexpected plot turns and the drama of a young, small-town lawyer trying to juggle his obligations to his client and to his fledgling law practice. There’s also romance—Nichols is in love with Betty, the defendant and his high school sweetheart whom he should never have let go. Nichols is tortured by the thought of losing his long-shot, legal gamble, which would mean forever losing Betty to a life sentence in prison.