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To save her father from bankruptcy, heroine Alice Calhoun agrees to marry wealthy Bryant Washburn. This wouldn't be so bad except that Washburn is the villain of the piece. Hero Gayne Whitman confronts the "heavy," and shortly afterward Washburn is found murdered. All the evidence points to Whitman, and for a while Calhoun is convinced that he's guilty. The vital exonerating evidence doesn't surface until the very last moment, as Whitman is being escorted to the electric chair. Even in 1927, In the First Degree was considered clichéd and old-fashioned.