Director: Matthew Penn
Writer: Richard Sweren
Manny Ehrlich, a bail bondsman, is found murdered in his office and the killer stole money from a lockbox. The initial suspect is the victim's client Oscar Liriano, a drug dealer who jumped bail. Ross and McCoy discover that Ehrlich referred Liriano, and many others, to a lawyer named Arvin Baker who fixes their cases for high fees. Ross owes her friend and fellow prosecutor Charlie Harmon a favor (see Harvest.) He wants the Liriano case, and she agrees.
But Liriano isn't the killer - he intended to surrender to police, confident that Baker would get the charges thrown out. The DAs arrange with Liriano and a judge to stage a false prosecution and find out if Baker is working with someone inside the judicial system. To prevent Baker getting suspicious, they decide not to tell Harmon the prosecution is a ruse. In a secretly recorded conversation with Liriano, Baker says he does have an accomplice. The DAs think it's the trial judge. But Ross questions why Harmon is giving Briscoe instructions that would help the defense, effectively setting him up to fail. She discovers Harmon has been involved in almost all Baker's past narcotics cases.
At the motion hearing, Harmon gives an exact description of the lockbox - which wasn't mentioned in the police reports, nor did he look at the box himself. He could only have known about it if he were there when Ehrlich was killed. When Baker is confronted with the evidence against him, he takes a plea. He says it was Harmon's idea to fix cases. Ehrlich found out, and demanded a cut of the money, so Harmon killed him. Harmon is charged with murder, but the judge excludes all evidence from the staged prosecution of Liriano.
Harmon threatens that unless he's offered the bare minimum plea, he'll ensure every defendant he's ever convicted will sue the DA's office. But then Ross discovers that Harmon's wife made wire transfers to an offshore account for him. Rather than let his wife be prosecuted as an accessory, Harmon agrees to a deal for murder and bribery. He says that because Ross had a wealthy husband, she doesn't have financial problems and has no idea what the real world is like. She points out that she would have helped him; but privately questions if he was right.
This episode contains examples of:
- Being Good Sucks: Between McCoy and Ross at the end.McCoy: You did the right thing.Ross: It doesn't feel like I did.
- Chekhov's Gun: Ehrlich's broken lockbox. How it was broken becomes important later.
- Day in the Limelight: For Jamie Ross. The murderer turns out to be a friend of hers.
- Deal with the Devil: Liriano is a violent drug dealer with every intention to continue, and he agrees to the fake prosecution partly to intimidate rivals by making it look like he killed someone. But the DAs make a deal to drop the drug charges against him so that they can catch Baker.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: A few episodes back, in Harvest, Harmon said he wanted to prosecute a murder case and made a trade with Ross to ensure this would come to pass. In this episode, he invokes that trade and is able to get in position to undermine the case against the guy that the police and prosecutors think killed the bondman. Unfortunately for him, his machinations are obvious enough that everyone else begins to see his own corruption, and his plans fall apart.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: Realizing his case against Liriano is falling apart (but not knowing that the District Attorney's office is monitoring the shadow trial), Harmon mentions the lockbox and the fact that the hinges were broken to establish that Liriano killed Ehrlich as a simple robbery motive. But Ross realizes that the broken hinges are a specific detail that wasn't recorded in the police report as the report simply stated that the lockbox was "broken". When she examines the lockbox later and sees the broken hinges, she realizes that Harmon only knew about the broken hinges because Harmon killed Ehrlich.
- It's Personal: Adam Schiff takes the idea someone in his office is tanking cases for money very seriously. It becomes even more personal when the culprit is a friend of Jamie Ross.
- Playing Drunk: Lennie plays drunk (or maybe just crazy) to someone about to use a payphone to distract him long enough for someone else to use it.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Harmon rather cruelly calls Ross a "dilettante" with a rich ex-husband.
