The trial of Russian Mafia hitman Yuri Andropovich ends in an explosive manner. Not because of his not guilty verdict, but more because of him dying. Specifically, District Attorney Patricia Purcell uses the jury deliberation time to sneak into the impound lot and plant a bomb in his car. Mark, as a member of the jury, finds himself looking into the case.
"Murder in the Courthouse" displays symptoms of the following tropes:
- Alliterative Name: Patricia Purcell.
- Amoral Attorney: Patricia was so dead-set on having Andropovich pay for his crimes that she resorts to killing him with a bomb, after he is acquitted for the third time in a row.
- Analogy Backfire: Mark tells the other jurors that there is doubt. One of them describes a patient with obvious seeming lung cancer, and asks Mark: "Don't you know it's cancer?" Mark replies that he suspects it's cancer, then he orders the right tests so he knows beyond reasonable doubt that it is cancer.
- Artistic License – Cars: The idea behind the bomb is that there is a trigger meant for Yuri's weight, so Patricia hides the bomb under his car seat. Car seats are in a frame above the ground, so Yuri's ass would never have set the trigger.
- Bluffing the Murderer: First, Qwan Lok's grandson is brought in for questioning in Yuri's murderer. This leads to Qwan angrily confronting Patricia, warning her that she's a dead woman if anything happens to the grandson. When Patricia gets into her car and hears a clicking sound like one from the bomb she used on Yuri, she talks Mark through how to disarm it, even saying that Qwan talked her through how to make it. Steve records the confession, Mark revealing that the click noise she heard was just a hair clip.
- Disability Alibi: When Andropovich is blown up, the first suspect becomes Qwan Lok, an old man with a previous conviction for bomb-making and ties to a Korean crime family that has a rivalry with the Russian Mafia; but when questioned, he points out that old age has left him blind and both arthritis and fused knuckles in his hands, which would make building a bomb out of the question. Mark notes, however, that he could still be connected to the case since neither of his disabilities prevent him from teaching bomb-making to someone else.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Mark tells a theory to Amanda and Jesse in the form of an experiment: Mark has made plenty of omelets before, and is something of an expert. However, he can't make them while he's blind (aka, blindfolded in this case). However, this doesn't mean he couldn't guide someone through making the omelet. Jesse and Amanda tie this into the bomb maker Qwan Lok and Patricia, both of whom have the same thorn in their side, Andropovich.
- Dramatic Irony: Humorous example; Norman complains about Mark having fun on jury duty when he is supposed to be working at Community General. Cue the next scene, in which Mark is exasperated with the bickering jurors.
- Fake Alibi: While the jury is deliberating Yuri's case, Patricia claims a headache and goes for a nap in the chambers of a visiting judge. Once the bailiff who let her in is back in his post at a nearby desk, Patricia calls the phone on the wall by the desk in order to get the bailiff's eyes off of the chamber door, slip into a nearby staircase, and get into the impound. Once she's done with her business, she calls the phone again to slip back inside the chambers.
- Jury Duty: At the beginning of the episode, Mark is on a jury.
- Magic Feather: A man named Wade Phelps is acting as the test subject to a testosterone patch at Community General, and seems to greatly improve after it. Mark and Amanda discuss at the end of the episode that Wade is actually on the placebo, as the side effects of the actual patch are awful.
- Oh, Crap!: It's all over Patricia's face when she sits in her car and hears a click.
- Reverse Whodunnit: One of the occasional episodes where the culprit is seen committing the murder.
- Shout-Out: While Mark is doing his omelet demonstration, he is wearing an apron that reads "Bach to the kitchen."
