Inconvenient Truth (Season 23, Episode 10)
Premise: A chef exonerated after 12 years in prison is stabbed in his pop-up restaurant, and the case against the lawyer who freed him and kept most of his settlement rests on a shaky eyewitness.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 23, Episode 10
- Detectives
- Det. Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks), Det. Vincent Riley (Reid Scott)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), DA Nicholas Baxter (Tony Goldwyn)
- Guest stars
- Paul Schulze as Keith Palmer, Jodi Stevens as Amanda Palmer, Apollo Levine as Jordan Bryant, Lawrence Kao as Chris Wu, Alimi Ballard as defense attorney Ron Delahunt
- Director
- Alex Hall
- Writers
- Story: Gia Gordon; Story & teleplay: Rick Eid & Pamela Wechsler
Summary
The Investigation
“Inconvenient Truth” opens at Jordan Bryant’s pop-up restaurant, where a man Bryant calls Cheese confronts him and is sent off by a waiter. That night Bryant is found stabbed, his phone and wallet untouched and the cameras off. The waiter, Chris Wu, says he came back from buying cigarettes, chased a man out to a black BMW and noticed an Islanders cap and a shiny green puffer jacket with an M on the sleeve. A snake tattoo identifies Cheese as gang member Nick Perez, who says they argued over a food-truck deal and that cameras will show him at home.
Fingerprints reveal that Bryant was born Jordan Walker and spent 12 years in prison, convicted of raping and killing a girl, before DNA cleared him. The girl’s father, whose identification convicted him, now accepts his innocence and had lent him $20,000. Bryant’s daughter, Felicity, mentions a $10 million settlement with the city, yet he received only about $1.1 million: his lawyer, Keith Palmer, the state’s leading exoneration attorney, took 55 percent plus more than $1 million in costs. Bryant had filed a bar complaint against Palmer just as Palmer was set to become a judge. Wu picks Palmer, a regular customer, from a photo array, Palmer’s firm owns a black BMW, and he is arrested.
The Trial
Defense attorney Ron Delahunt fails to suppress the identification. Baxter, who knew Palmer when he was U.S. attorney, approves the case and publicly brands him a predator who exploited the men he freed, while adding ten lawyers to the office’s post-conviction unit. At trial Delahunt airs Bryant’s prison infractions and a fight in which he cut a gang member, hinting at revenge, though the warden says Bryant was defending himself. Wu admits he had smoked marijuana and gave only a general description, but he points out Palmer in court.
Palmer testifies that he was driving to his country house and produces a red-light ticket photographed six blocks away three minutes after the 911 call. Test drives show the trip is barely possible. After Wu is walked back through the scene and asked how sure he is, Price tells Baxter he fears Palmer is innocent. Baxter, noting that the office’s own error set the tragedy in motion, calls the system imperfect but worth trusting and tells Price to do what he thinks right.
Spoiler, the ending: Price visits Palmer to tell him the charge is being dismissed, and the visit works as planned: detectives record a call in which Palmer’s wife, Amanda, confesses to the killing. Baxter announces that the eyewitness picked the wrong person, praises Price and Maroun, and says Amanda Palmer, who wanted to keep her husband’s misconduct from becoming public, has been charged with second-degree murder.
Why it stands out
- Baxter reveals that he took two wrongful-conviction cases pro bono in private practice and lost both, the only trials he says he has ever lost.
- The prosecutors drop their own case mid-trial after Price comes to doubt the eyewitness, and Baxter publicly commends them for admitting the mistake.
- Mistaken identification drives the story twice: it sent Bryant to prison, and it nearly convicts the lawyer who freed him.