Episode 21

<--   22 March 2005   -->

James has asked his client, Gavin Brooks, to meet him for coffee to talk about his defense strategy. Gavin---a successful doctor charged with defrauding his bank of hundreds of thousands of dollars to fuel his gambling addiction---isn't interested. He tells James he loves his new, simpler life and that he no longer attends his Gamblers Anonymous meetings because he's betting much smarter now. He's switched from Division One college basketball to Division Three because the odds in Division One are "too tough to cover."
Elliot's annoying client Rosemary is back, this time with Margie, her equally addled aunt/cousin from New Brunswick. The two were picked up in a drug sweep in a downtown park and arrested for trafficking and possession. As the two concoct a half-baked defense, Elliot develops a throbbing pain behind his eye brought on by the women's inane bickering. He leaves and convinces Alice to take over the case. Alice meets with the women to advise them to plead guilty but is also quickly overwhelmed and turns the case over to Nancy. In Plea Court, Nancy tells the women she has a joint submission where they'll plead to the possession, the Crown will drop the trafficking, and each will get three months. But before they get a chance to plea, Rosemary's sense of self-preservation kicks in and she tells the judge she had nothing to do with it, the drugs belonged to her "aunt," and she wasn't even in the park. As the two women come to blows in the prisoner's box, the judge holds the matter down until they can lure Elliot back into Plea Court to deal with the matter.
Outside Old City Hall, Alice is anxiously waiting for her client, Brian Dennis, a Native homeless man charged with beating his drug-addicted girlfriend, Rayna, one night on the street. He shows up but without Rayna, who was supposed to testify in his defense. Alice is angry that Rayna hasn't shown up, but Brian is worried about her and wants to go find her. Alice tells him Rayna only seems to care about getting her next fix and right now they have to focus on keeping Brian out of jail. Rayna finally shows up but she's high. With the trial about to start, Alice tells Rayna to wait in the hallway outside the courtroom until it's her time to testify. But Rayna is hungry and wants to get someting to eat, so Alice promises her $20 after she testifies, "Then you can either go get yourself something to eat or something to put in your veins. Your choice." In a friendly gesture, the arresting officer, Constable Ian Faraday, tells Alice he'll keep an eye on Rayna to make sure she stays put.
In the trial of the gambling doctor, Crown Attorney Menon is questioning the employee from the bank who authorized the doctor's loans. He explains that Dr Brooks used his mortgage-free home in Forest Hill and a farm in Caledon as security then took out a mortgage on the house at another bank and sold the farm, all without telling his bank. When he asked for an additional $120,000 on his line of credit to buy a Mercedes, he used the money to gamble instead. On cross, James suggests that since the bank failed to adequately check the state of the doctor's finances, it's more a case of bad loans than fraud. Gavin's ex-wife, Irene, takes the stand next and tells the court about her anguish at losing the house, selling their furniture, and pulling their children out of private school, all because of Gavin's gambling. But on cross-examination, James details Irene's extravagances and excesses, such as persuading her husband to build a $100,000 heated parking garage under their Forest Hill home. James argues that there was intense pressure on Gavin to earn more and more and that, eventually, he turned to gambling to maintain his wife's lifestyle.
Free of Rosemary and Margie, Elliot has moved on to his other client, Alvin Johnson, aka Juice-EE, a young rap musician about to release his first CD. Alvin has been charged, along with two other men, with attacking a club-goer outside a downtown club. Initially, Alvin told Elliot he was nowhere near the entrance where the attack occurred and provided two witnesses who corroborated his story. Now he wants to plead guilty, saying the witnesses are lying to protect him and he wants to do the right thing. Elliot thinks Alvin is being pressured by his two co-accused---who are possibly gang members---to plead to the assault so they can get off. Elliot approaches the Crown handling the case, the young and inexperienced Marcus Weekes, and gets him to reduce the charges and agree to a three-month sentence.
On the stand in Brian Dennis's case, a man testifies that a group of Native men regularly hang out in the park, getting drunk and bumming change. On the night of the assault, he was awakened by a woman screaming, being punched and kicked by a man that he identifies as Brian. When Alice questions him, she suggests that he simply told police that the attacker and woman were Native and that Brian and Rayna were the only two Native people on the scene when police arrived. When Constable Faraday takes the stand, he testifies that even though Rayna denied an assault had taken place, this was fairly typical in cases of domestic assault, and that he had arrested Brian seven times before, four of those times for assaulting Rayna. When Alice suggests that the officer's previous encounters influenced his judgement, the officer says he can't afford to ignore what he's learned about someone.
On the stand, Gavin tells the court he was under intense pressure to earn more and more money as soon as he and his wife were married. Despite bringing in more than $400,000 a year, Gavin increased his patient load at his medical clinic and turned to betting on football to escape the pressure. At first he was winning close to $100,000 a month, but his clinic was falling apart and his wife kept on spending. Unable to keep up, he took everything he had to Atlantic City and lost. Under cross-examination, Gavin tells Menon he was planning on paying back the money to the bank and that he didn't intentionally mislead them---he was just so out of it he'd lost track of his assets. Gavin says his ex-wife should help pay back the loans by selling some of the jewellery her new husband has bought her, since he got into trouble trying to please her in the first place. When Gavin receives probation without a criminal record, James tells him he's free to start up his practice again but Gavin wants to start a new life where he can live free of material possessions. Despite James' warnings that he'll be re-arrested if he doesn't start paying back the loans, Gavin isn't worried, saying he'll go on the run to start his new life in Vegas with a showgirl.
Outside Plea Court, Elliot tells Alvin's father that his son is facing serious dangers if he goes to jail. Elliot thinks he can get him three months of house arrest but Alvin Sr wants his son to go "inside." Elliot is confused and Alvin explains that the only way to make it as a rap singer is to have a criminal record. His father paid the witnesses to change their story and incriminate him to make him look like "a real bad-ass gangster." Disgusted, Elliot tries to wrangle a proper sentence for his client in Plea Court but when father and son resist, Elliot recuses himself from the case.
When Rayna takes the stand in her boyfriend's defense, she testifies that she told Constable Faraday that Brian hadn't hit her but he arrested him anyway. Kaye argues on cross-examination that the last time Brian went to jail for hitting her, Rayna's life on the street was unbearably hard because Brian wasn't around to protect her. Kaye suggests she'd say anything, even lie, to keep Brian from going back to jail. Brian ignores Alice's advice and also takes the stand, telling the judge he's been clean for six months and hasn't been violent with Rayna for over a year. Under cross, Kaye cleverly calls into doubt whether Brian really has Rayna's best interests in mind, whether he's protecting her or stalking her, and Brian is convicted and sentenced to three months. After the trial, Alice is surprised when Constable Faraday unexpectedly asks her out. Although she tells him she doesn't usually date cops, he convinces her to have dinner with him.