Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley have spent close to two decades in prison for the 1993 murders of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas, when new DNA testing reopens the case this film covers. Directors Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky, closing out the trilogy they began the year of the trial, follow the defense team's push to get the evidence retested and the courtroom maneuvering that follows, including the unusual Alford plea that lets all three men walk free while formally maintaining their innocence is unproven. The film gives real screen time to Terry Hobbs, stepfather of one victim, whose DNA turns up at the scene and who becomes a focus of suspicion once the original theory about satanic ritual killing collapses under the new testing. John Mark Byers, another stepfather whose earlier on-camera behavior made him a suspect in the first two films, reappears here recast as an advocate for the accused. Archival courtroom footage and new interviews trace how a small-town case built on witness testimony and teenage confessions came apart under forensic scrutiny.