Theodore Bacino has applied for parole 24 times. Each year since 1982, the 71-year old, two time-convicted felon appears before one member of the Illinois Prisoner Review Board. And each year his request is denied. To the state of Illinois, Bacino’s yearly parole application is a relic of a philosophy long since passed. He, like more than three hundred other inmates, is a C number, an inmate sentenced before drastic changes were made to sentencing laws. As far as some people are concerned, he is trapped in the system, an example of the arbitrary nature of punishment. As far as the victim’s family is concerned, Bacino is where he belongs. This film follows Theodore Bacino as he applies for parole for the 25th time. His application, a process caught in a bureaucratic no man land, is measured by an increasingly conservative parole board and resisted by the victim’s family. But Bacino is hopeful. His institutional record is spotless and his wife of 45 years is waiting for his release. All he can do is wait for his chance to speak, then pray as the 15-member parole board decides whether a convicted cop killer has earned the right to walk free, or whether that right was lost the moment he pulled the trigger.