A summer night in Detroit, 1982. In the middle of the auto recession, passions and tensions run high. Meanwhile, Vincent Chin, a young Chinese-American draftsman, celebrates his upcoming wedding at a nightclub bachelor party with friends. In the club Ronald Ebens, a laid-off Chrysler foreman, and his stepson Michael Nitz "mistake" Chin for a Japanese-one of those foreigners who are putting good Americans like themselves out of work. In the parking lot, they beat him to death with a baseball bat. Nine months later, Vincent Chin's killers are convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to three years probation and a $3,750 fine. The decision in this case sparked a nationwide campaign for justice that resulted in the first criminal civil rights prosecution involving discrimination towards Asian Americans. And it inspired filmmakers Christine Choy and Renee Tajima to probe the complex web of fact and emotion that surrounds the story. Who Killed Vincent Chin? reconstructs the night of Chin's death-revealing a Rashomon-like quagmire of conflicting accounts-and the legal case that ensued. And by extension it explores from all sides the xenophobia lurking just beneath the surface of America's economic problems.