Filmmaker Werner Herzog explores a triple homicide case in Conroe, Texas and "probes the human psyche to explore why people kill--and why a state kills". Through intimate conversations with those involved, including 28-year-old death row inmate Michael Perry (scheduled to die within eights days of appearing on-screen), Herzog achieves what he describes as 'a gaze into the abyss of the human soul.' Herzog's inquiries also extend to the families of the victims and perpetrators as well as a state executioner and pastor who've been with death row prisoners as they've taken their final breaths.