In 1981 in Odessa, Texas, the nude body of a beloved Catholic priest was found bound and mutilated in a seedy motel room. Cops had no leads until a young gay Apache man named James Reyos suddenly called to confess. Reyos recanted, but it was too late: he was swiftly convicted and sentenced to 38 years in prison. Decades later, a local police chief uncovered buried evidence that would have exonerated Reyos in his original trial. With the support of the Innocence Project of Texas, Reyos prepares to fight to clear his name once again.

Anyone who has seen Deborah S. Esquenazi's Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four (which won the Best Documentary Award at Frameline40) knows the Peabody-winning director and investigative journalist is no stranger to seeing innocent LGBTQ+ folks thrown into Texas prisons for crimes they didn’t do. Night in West Texas is a probing look at the cracks in the American justice system and how one innocent man so easily slipped through them. At once both harrowing and deeply affecting, the film shows how Reyos was vilified as a minority but also how a community rallied around him to battle for the justice he deserved.