Suspect

Suspect is a 1987 American legal mystery thriller film directed by Peter Yates and starring Cher, Dennis Quaid, and Liam Neeson. Other notable cast members include John Mahoney, Joe Mantegna, Fred Melamed, and Philip Bosco. Plot Around Christmas, a young woman, Elizabeth Quinn, waits outside the private quarters of Supreme Court Justice Lowell, and he gives her an envelope and wishes her a good holiday. Soon after she leaves, he pulls out his hunting rifle and commits suicide, for which no explanation or context is given. Shortly thereafter, a group of men take a polar bear swim in the river, and discover the body of Elizabeth, floating in the Potomac with her throat slit. Carl Wayne Anderson (Liam Neeson), a homeless, deaf Vietnam veteran, is arrested for the crime, based almost entirely on the fact that he was seen sleeping in Quinn's car the night of her murder. Kathleen Riley (Cher) is the beleaguered D.C. public defender assigned to represent Anderson. The car was abandoned in a desolate K Street parking lot. Anderson, it is eventually revealed, found the car unlocked and was looking for a warm place to sleep since it was the dead of winter. But since he was homeless, had no alibi, and was also found in possession of Quinn's wallet, he was arrested for her murder.