Suspect (1987) on Netflix

Plot summary

Law clerk Elizabeth Quinn is going through the record of a seventeen-year-old case when what she reads sends her to the trial judge, who hands her a cassette tape and then takes his own life. Quinn is murdered soon after. A homeless man is charged after he is caught carrying her wallet and a large knife, and the court assigns public defender Kathleen Riley to him. Riley does not believe that her client, a deaf and mute Vietnam veteran named Carl Wayne Anderson, killed anyone. Eddie Sanger, a lobbyist angling to escape jury duty, impresses Riley with how closely he notices things, and the two set out to find who really did it. Judge Matthew Helms presses for a fast trial and turns down her plea for time to look into the death of a possible witness.