The film is loosely based on Attina Marie Cannaday, who along with David Gray and Dawn Bushart, killed Ronald Wojcik, with a gun, in Harrison County, Mississippi on June 3, 1982.
Cannaday (born September 8, 1965) was charged with robbery, kidnapping, and homicide. At the time of her trial, she was a sixteen year old divorcee, who had married at thirteen and divorced at fourteen. She was convicted in Harrison County Circuit Court of the kidnap and murder of U. S. Air Force Sergeant Ronald Wojcik and the jury sentenced her to death by lethal injection. The guilty verdict was upheld, but the sentence was reversed in 1984, Cannaday v. State, 455 So.2d 713, 720 (Miss. 1984), and she is currently serving one life sentence and two 25-year sentences at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (inmate number 42451). She was released on parole on March 9, 2008.
Her co-defendant, David Randolph Gray (born May 29, 1954) was charged with aggravated assault, grand larceny, and homicide. He, too, was sentenced to death by lethal injection. His sentence was reversed in May 1987, by the U. S. Supreme Court, in Gray v. Mississippi, 481 U.S. 648, on the basis “a qualified juror was excluded from his trial”. He is currently serving a life sentence in Central Mississippi Correctional Facility (inmate number 01440).