Unmarked spoilers appear in this page. You Have Been Warned
Shaw stops a man from killing himself, only to learn to his horror that the person he helped went on to shoot up a hospital and murder a doctor. Shaw is further tested when the killer makes an insanity defense and Shaw finds himself sympathizing with him.
- Call-Back: Shaw's encounter with two police officers who drew their guns on him — which ended with the department taking the officers side and suspending Shaw for a week for not following their orders — is referenced.
- Everything Is Racist:
- The first thing Cartwright's defense lawyer does is bring up the fact that Black women in America have a higher rate of pregnancy complications and maternal death than White women, without mentioning other factors such as the higher percentage of Black women suffering from obesity, sexually-transmitted diseases, drug addictions or any combination thereof compared to White women, in order to cast the inference that the doctor that Cartwright killed was racist and this led to him deliberately neglecting Cartwright's pregnant wife, so she and their unborn child died of pre-eclampsia. This turns out to be a build-up to his newly concocted plan: invoke an Insanity Defense based on "race-based systemic trauma" — literally arguing, "Cartwright was temporarily driven mad by racism, and so is innocent of murder by reason of insanity".
- In the penultimate scene in the last ten minutes or so of the episode, Shaw goes on a rant to his partner Vincent Riley about how everything in American is fundamentally racist against Black people.
- Foreshadowing: When Shaw arrests Cartwright, the killer clearly declares "An eye for an eye" as he is put in handcuffs. This turns out to be the key piece of evidence that disputes Cartwright's subsequent Insanity Defense, because it shows his actions were deliberate, conscious, and rationally undertaken.
- Insanity Defense: Cartwright tries one of these, citing trauma he allegedly obtained from dealing with a lifetime of systemic racism. It doesn't work.
- It's All About Me: Price offers Cartwright a plea bargain of ten years for manslaughter instead of the 25-to-life for murder he's facing. Cartwright refuses unless he can also get to serve those ten years under house arrest, declaring that it's too unfair to his son otherwise. Never mind the grief of the wife and child(ren) of the man he murdered. It comes back to bite him when the jury declares him guilty.
- Rank Up: Price is now the acting district attorney, due to Jack McCoy retiring in the previous episode.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Zigzagged. When Price initially goes to ask Shaw to act as a rebuttal witness by bringing up how Cartwright was heard saying "an eye for an eye" when he was arrested, Shaw initially tries to refuse, claiming he doesn't remember hearing Cartwright say those words and making it very obvious that his sympathy for Cartwright means he'd rather see Cartwright go free. Price reluctantly presents Shaw with a subpoena, forcing him onto the stand. Faced with the realities of perjuring himself, which would cost him his job at the least and see him arrested at worst, Shaw reluctantly confirms hearing Cartwright say "an eye for an eye" at his arrest.
- Sympathetic Murderer: In-universe, Shaw feels a deep sympathy for Cartwright, who lost his wife and unborn child due to the misdiagnosis of a pair of doctors and responded first by attempting suicide, and then by seeking to murder both of the doctors responsible for the misdiagnosis in a grief-fueled rampage, gunning one down before he was apprehended. Both Price and Vincent diplomatically point out to him that Shaw's sympathy for the man (and his guilt for not getting him counselling after preventing him from committing suicide, which could have prevented the murder) doesn't change the fact that Cartwright chose to go out and murder somebody.
