Close to Home Recap: A Father's Story
This episode seems at first to start in a somewhat backwards fashion, with the verdict being read at the beginning - but in reality, it's the start of the tale. For we find out that the accused is getting off without so much as a slap on the wrist. But then the victim (actually, the father of the victim, for the victim herself is dead) grabs a gun from his car and begins shooting wildly. Unfortunately he isn't a very good shot, and he misses the accused completely - but he wounds Doug Hellman and kills his assistant, which leads to the actual crime that will be tried during this episode. Of course, the original will be investigated, too.
It seems that the original crime was one that should have been easily won, but the prosecutor didn't do well against Hellman. Still, all the evidence points to what should have been a fairly easy conviction, and so it doesn't make sense why it all fell apart the way it did, and then there was a witness added late in the trial that was suddenly scrubbed. It's all very suspicious, and when Annabeth and Maureen ask about it, they are met with nothing but resistance.
Until a wall finally breaks down, and it turns out that their own colleague had a bit of an inappropriate relationship with Hellman's assistant, and that is how he came up with that witness. That's where the name came from, and it would have sealed the deal in a trial that he felt slipping away from him - except for the fact that Hellman found out about it, and he held it over his head, so he had to scratch the witness or risk a mistrial. Not wanting to expose everything, he canceled the witness, and lost the trial, and his client flipped when he lost. Now it's all a mess.
To make matters worse, the new lawyer for the shooter wants to reveal the records to show the client's state of mind, because he was assured that the trial would be won, and suddenly he was left with nothing. Frankly I don't understand - I think you ought to be responsible for your actions. But hey, it's not me making the laws. In any case, I can understand them not wanting to open up the books on this sort of thing.
Before they do, Annabeth goes and talks to Hellman, and it turns out that there is something else that has come up - it seems that the original accused had a problem fifteen years prior with a girlfriend who ended up dead after a boating "accident" that seemed to be covered up by an elected coroner - elected in large part because of his relationship to the family of the accused. So it seems that there may be much more to this story after all. Using this information, they get the angry father to agree to a plea agreement, and bring the original killer back to trial as well. Two for the price of one!
