Just hours before he was scheduled for his final hearing, a man who had spent five years behind prison walls made one last request: to see his young daughter, whom he hadn’t held in three years.

What she whispered in his ear would unravel a five-year-old conviction, expose corruption at the highest levels of the justice system, and reveal a secret no one was prepared for.

The clock on the wall read 6:00 a.m. when the guards opened the cell of Daniel Foster, who had spent the last five years at the Huntsville Unit in Texas.