After his execution date is set, Ron's case is assigned to "Janet Chesley, a lawyer with the Indigent Defense System in Norman" (165), for the habeas corpus stage of appeals. Her petition is so convincing that the magistrate who reads it, Jim Payne, is left with "some doubts about the fairness of Ron's trial" (166). He persuades Judge Frank Seay to grant a stay of execution. Payne and his team come to believe that a new trial is in order, and they are able to convince the judge to at least consider it.

Dennis Fritz, still "a fixture in the law library," hears of the developments in Ron's case. Having heard about new methods of DNA testing, and having closely followed public trials in which it was used, Dennis decides to contact Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project in New York and one of O.J. Simpson's attorneys. Jim Payne and his team press on with exhaustive research into every detail of Ron's trial, compiling a long list of constitutional problems to justify a new trial, which Judge Seay eventually grants.

Back in Ada, Bill Peterson resists the idea of a new trial, denying that anything had been wrong with the original one, but the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals upholds Judge Seay's ruling.