Help - is THIS the movie I've been remembering? Scene description:

I'm trying to remember a movie I saw as a kid - the movie was made in the mid to late 70s (possibly as late as '82 or as early as '71), and MIGHT have been an HBO movie (or maybe it was a feature film that just happened to be on HBO, but it seemed to have had a "made for cable" feel). the setting is a Southern town (or a Midwestern town) in the USA in the 1930s or 40s I think (possibly the 20s but i doubt it). all i remember is an eerie, spooky ending (or may have been the middle or near the end), where a man in his 40s to 60s (possibly a black man, but i forgot) is killed with an ax to the head or heart, by a faceless killer, as he's walking on the side of this house or barn of some sort, near late afternoon or pre-dusk. I remember seeing a "hands-only" shot of the killer picking up an axe that was either wedged into a tree stump, or was laying across it. The killer snuck up behind him as he walked back to the house, and as the man turned around, drove the axe either into his head or heart. It was in the eerie late afternoon sun or pre-dusk hours, on the side of this house or barn. If I'm remembering correctly that it was a black man, it was someone resembling scatman crothers, but i don't think it WAS scatman (and no, i'm not thinking of The Shining or The Town That Dreaded Sundown). The rest of the movie was something to do with a court trial for murder, in which the defendent I believe was maybe wrongfully convicted. So, I think the ending implied that the wrong man was convicted (via a frame-up), and we were being shown the killer killing once again, after the conviction. It seems a sub-plot of the movie could have been like racism, and/or a romance or sexual encounter or affair of some sort (possibly an interracial one). So far, I know for sure that it's not TTTDS, The Postman Always Rings Twice, or Dark Night of the Scarecrow, and I don't think it's Chiefs (1983, TV movie) either, neither is it Bloody Mama .......based on another IMDB poster's suggestion who was just guessing, it could possibly be Night of the Strangler (but to me, it didn't really sound like it) - for one thing, the scene i remember is obviously NOT a strangulation scene - LOL. just before the end credits, (i MIGHT be mixing movies up in my memory), but i might remember something like one of those freeze frame synapsis, where they show the faces of the characters, and either a narrator or some writing on the screen says what happened to the people. they usually, of course, only do this in true story cases, so if i'm remembering that correctly, the movie was probably a true story. they did that at the end of The Town That Dreaded Sundown (to use an example), but i know for sure that it's not TTTDS.
....Could I be rememembering either Dark Secret of Harvest Home, or The House on Greenapple Road maybe?

Sadly, Johnny Cash is no longer with us on Earth....God has killed him. :-(