Line #14 Recap/LawAndOrderS11E9Hubris


1	A jewelry store manager goes to the store and finds the scene of a massacre: the owners, employee Gail Churchill and her six-year-old daughter Ellie have all been killed execution-style. It becomes clear that Gail was the primary target. Briscoe and Green discover that her boyfriend, a realtor named Mark Landry, is actually convicted conman Richard Morriston. Gail discovered that a valuable necklace he gave her was registered to his ex-girlfriend Beth Fazekas. She then learned from a background check that he had a police record and that Beth disappeared in mysterious circumstances.
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3	Morriston is arrested when missing security tapes from the store are found in his apartment, showing him dragging the victims off to the back room to their deaths. But the defense gets the footage excluded as evidence. At the time of Gail's murder, Morriston was supposed to have been showing a client an apartment; the detectives find the gun and stolen jewels hidden in the building. Against the judge's advice, Morriston decides to represent himself.
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5	Morriston uses his charm and good looks to manipulate the jury, especially the forewoman Carol Gibbons. [=McCoy=] fails to persuade the judge to recuse Gibbons from the jury, or to prevent Morriston from calling his PA as a witness to give him a false alibi. The jury hangs and Morriston goes free. But subsequently, Gibbons tells [=McCoy=] and Carmichael that she and Morriston began dating during the trial. She influenced the jury to acquit, and he broke up with her the day after the trial ended. She now believes he is guilty.
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7	[=McCoy=] agrees to request a hearing with the judge so that Gibbons can testify under oath. The [=DA=]s still don't hold much hope of convicting him since she is not a reliable witness. But before anything else can happen, Briscoe and Green are called to Gibbons' home. Morriston broke in and tried to strangle her, so she killed him in self-defense with a pair of shears. Her story checks out and she won't be arrested or charged.
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9	!!Tropes present in this episode:
10	* AFoolForAClient: Richard Morriston opts to represent himself. It works, because an AmoralAttorney might be OK with suborning perjury, but [[EvenEvilHasStandards would draw the line]] at [[JuryAndWitnessTampering seducing the jury foreperson]]. Hopefully.
11	* TheCasanova: Morriston effortlessly charms a string of women, including Gail, Gibbons, and his PA. He's also had a considerable number of past girlfriends who he used in his various schemes.
12	* DeathOfAChild: One of the dead in this episode is 6-year-old Ellie Churchill.
13	* IHaveManyNames: Morriston has used numerous aliases to avoid detection.
14	* JuryAndWitnessTampering: Morriston seduced one of the jurors to prevent a conviction. He also convinced his PA to lie on the witness stand for him.
15	* LeaveNoWitnesses: Morriston merely wanted to kill Gail, but he also murdered Gail's daughter and the Bennetts to prevent them from testifying against him. He also attempted to murder the juror he seduced, although he was too late for that.
16	* LifesavingMisfortune: The manager wasn't working on the day of the murders because she had to take care of her sick mother.
17	* OutlivingOnesOffspring:
18	** Morriston killed Ellie and her mother, but her father survived.
19	** Beth Fazekas was probably murdered by Morriston, and her mother is still alive during the episode.
20	* SheKnowsTooMuch: Morriston killed Gail because she had figured out that he killed his ex-girlfriend Beth.
21	* SoftSpokenSadist: Richard Morriston. [=McCoy=] tells the jury that he's going to ask them to realize that this "nicely dressed, soft-spoken young man" is a murderer.
22	* TheyLookJustLikeEveryoneElse: Richard Morriston is handsome and does not hesitate to use his charm to get away with murder figuratively and literally.
23	* TheSociopath: Richard Morriston has no qualms about killing four people when he was only targeting one and is an expert manipulator.
24	* WouldHurtAChild: One of the four people Morriston killed in the jewelry store robbery is a little girl, Gail Churchill's daughter Ellie.

Context Recap / LawAndOrderS11E9Hubris