That the juror in question is a Black woman reinforces a point about racial injustice that Your Honor has been making ever since Kofi’s arrest, conviction, and murder: That even a “good,” progressive white judge like Michael Desiato will allow Black people to become collateral damage when it suits him. After getting a juror’s note that signals a guilty verdict, Michael quietly sets about discovering the juror’s identity and manipulates the data on her phone to make it seem like she’s seeking information about the case outside the courtroom. He asks the jury to “forget” the frantic call Jimmy Baxter made to his son before his arrest - which, incidentally, implicates him for providing Jimmy that information - and he keeps them from seeing the graphic photographs of Kofi’s bashed-in head, though the prosecutor, Fiona McKee (played by yet another veteran character actor, Maura Tierney), paints an effective picture in their minds. Even with his connections, Carlo could not wriggle out of that verdict.įor now, Michael is laying the groundwork by minimizing the gruesome nature of Kofi’s death and targeting a juror who’s already leaning strongly toward conviction. But that argument is undercut by the physical evidence, which suggests anything but self-defense, and by testimony from the victim that landed Carlo in prison in the first place, who talks about being assaulted and curb-stomped. It cannot be denied that Carlo killed Kofi in his cell and so his lawyer is arguing for self-defense under the logic that Kofi ran over his brother and was coming back for another Baxter, perhaps on behalf of his gang. Those peers are going to need serious convincing, because the opening statements and early witness testimony is pointing toward guilt. “Twelve of our peers will do exactly what I want them to do.” “I’m Gregory fucking Peck in there,” he tells Jimmy Baxter, who’s alarmed by how the trial is going. The second, more nuanced step is to frame the evidence in such a way that the jury will have to acquit. Without mentioning the pandemic by name, he warns of a vague “existential threat” that might contaminate his courtroom, so as much as it pains him to jettison the principles of transparency and accountability, he says he will only allow access to lawyers, court staff, and family members. It turns out that tipping the scales of justice in the Carlo Baxter case is going to take a truly astonishing amount of judicial tomfoolery, and Michael’s first step is to make sure it’s done with limited scrutiny from the press and the public. He has to do it to save his own life and his son’s life - Baxter has given him a “deadline” in the most literal sense of the term - but his soul is in peril. That obviously did not work, and so the injustices have ballooned to an unimaginable scale, with several people dead and with Michael now in the position to deny justice for Kofi once again for good measure. To put it in Breaking Bad terms, his treatment of Kofi Jones was a half-measure: Rather than come clean to prevent this innocent young Black man from pleading guilty for the hit-and-run, his solution was to hire him a great lawyer. The gods simply will not let him get away with what he’s attempting. Having to preside over his own sins is the nightmare he surely deserves.īut the effect is, nonetheless, a gut punch, to the point where Michael returns to judge’s chambers after a witness’s testimony just to catch his breath. And so the ugly business of protecting his son has completely upended his conception of himself, and with Kofi’s murder and the murders of Kofi’s family members, this grand deception has resulted in a cascading set of tragedies for which he is responsible. He may be friends with a guy like Charlie, who has his connections to New Orleans’s seedier elements, but he is in every way a straight arrow. Before the hit-and-run, his reputation for doing things the right way was unimpeachable. “Part Eight” opens with Michael laying out his shoes, socks, and watch in tidy order, underlining a point that the show has made repeatedly. It is plainly obvious to her that Carlo is guilty of murdering Kofi Jones, and not all the judges in the building can be trusted. Now that she’s been quietly shuttled aside for rehab, the case is back in front of Michael, and she can take some comfort in his peerless reputation for fairness and fastidiousness - as much as those qualities curb the pace of justice more than she’d like. Michael Desiato is “the stubborn bastard in Court 14 who insists on putting justice over everything.” Those are the words of Sara LeBlanc, the chief justice, who had the Carlo Baxter case assigned to her courtroom until the police mysteriously pulled her over on DUI charges.
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