Love's Battle (1920)

Smiling Joe Wiley, a young hobo, is thrown off a train in a Western town, where he wins the admiration of the local cowboys by pulling a fake holdup in a restaurant. A former cowboy himself, Joe finds romance when he rescues a young woman named Kate from a runaway horse; however, he makes an enemy of an unsavory character who later manages to frame him for a robbery and murder. Joe is sentenced to death, and Kate goes to the governor to beg for Joe's pardon, arguing the unfairness of using circumstantial evidence in a trial. When the governor resists Kate's entreaties, she tears her clothes and screams for help, convincing the governor's wife and the police that the governor attacked her. Kate confesses to the deception, and the governor, now persuaded of the inadequacy of circumstantial evidence, receives word that the real killer has confessed to the crime on his deathbed. Joe is saved from the gallows in the nick of time.