Outlaw Episode 1.05 In Re: Tracy Vidalin

It's late at night, and a pick-up truck idles outside an apartment building on a deserted street. An alarm in the building sounds as young Lonnie Daws sprints towards the truck, ordering his girlfriend to drive. As the cops turn the corner to give chase,

In short order, Al and Garza are on the road bound for Dover, Delaware, the home of Garza's nemesis Senator Vidalin, whose daughter Tracy is in trouble. Al doesn't like it, since Vidalin has been giving Garza grief since he left the court, but Garza insists that Vidalin was a good friend to him for 28 of the 29 years they've known each other. Besides, he's known Tracy all her life. She's a great girl and needs his help. Al and Garza meet with a bloodied and disoriented Tracy at the county lock-up, and encourage her to tell her story from the beginning. Flashing back, Tracy claims Lonnie told her to wait in the truck while he fetched her a surprise for "being cute." After 10 minutes, an alarm sounded, Lonnie came running, yelling at her to drive and shooting at the cops. She panicked and crashed the car, but she didn't kill anyone.

When Al asks Tracy about her interrogation by the police 21 hours!Tracy simply says she wanted to talk to her father first. She's so glad he called Garza; she knows he won't let anything bad happen to her. Afterwards, Garza meets with Vidalin and his wife Lois. The DA's going to charge Tracy with murdering the cop if she knew about the burglary, she can be charged under the law as an accomplice to murder. Garza pulls Vidalin aside, explaining he's not the right lawyer for Tracy. Vidalin insists Garza take the case he's the smartest lawyer there is. Garza reluctantly agrees to help, as long as Vidalin listens and lets him do it his way. Lucinda however refuses to get involved with the case, explaining she won't go to Delaware with Mereta and Eddie because Vidalin hates her boss. Smelling a rat, Eddie and Mereta decide to investigate Lucinda's Delawarephobia.

When Al reports that the cops won't let him talk to Lonnie, who's in the hospital, Garza instructs Eddie to get a Conditional Examination Order signed by a judge. Garza enters the arraignment hearing prepared to stall until Eddie and Mereta can get Lonnie's statement, which he's sure will exonerate Tracy. What he's not prepared for is the blind ambition of DA Doug Inman, who's charging Tracy with two counts of felony burglary and felony murder. Eddie and Mereta manage to get their order, but by the time they get to Lonnie's room, he's dead. Tracy pleads not guilty, and despite Garza's best effort, the judge denies bail and remands her to the county jail pending trial.

Lois Vidalin panics. Tracy can't spend another night in jail; she doesn't even like spending the night at friends' houses. Garza asks the Vidalins to focus; now he needs to know all about Lonnie. After getting together with Lonnie a few months ago, Tracy became distant and her grades suffered. Vidalin admits to calling the Attorney General after Lonnie was caught breaking into his uncle's liquor store Tracy begged him to do it. Garza warns Vidalin not to make any more calls they're inappropriate and only piss people off. The DA has to prove Tracy knew what Lonnie was up to, and so far that seems impossible. After the Vidalins leave, Inman delivers a DVD containing Tracy's confession to the police. When a stunned Garza insists Tracy told him she didn't talk to the cops, Inman scoffs. Maybe she lied...

Garza goes home, puts the DVD in his laptop, and hunkers down for a long night. Detective Hank Darby puts the screws to Tracy during the first 10 hours of interrogation, but she remained silent. Al finds Garza passed out in front of the laptop in the morning, and takes over watching the remaining 12 hours of the interrogation. Meanwhile, the DA sends over the list of Tracy's possessions from the truck and copies of written materials. There are hair clips, college applications, a pen from the Hay-Adams. Mereta admires Tracy's college admission essay, all about heroes who disappoint. In fact, Tracy's quite a writer. Lucinda has read her journal, and clearly Tracy's furious about her father's recent affair. Garza passes it off; all teenaged girls are angry. Still, they've got to get the details on Vidalin's dirty laundry.

Garza visits Vidalin to drop the bomb: he needs to know all about his mistress Paula Munger. Apparently, Tracy was angry enough about the affair to act out by dating bad boy Lonnie. Vidalin admits the DA wants his job and he'd do anything to get it. When Garza insists on the truth, Vidalin claims he called off the affair six months ago. Garza wants to know why Tracy said she saw them together two weeks ago per her journal. Vidalin admits Lois doesn't know about Paula. Garza bets Inman will bring this up during the trial; he needs Paula's number. Back at Garza's, Mereta is just asking about the numbers tattooed on Lucinda's arm when Garza walks in after talking to Paula, who was in town two weeks ago, staying at the Hay-Adams. She also started getting strange crank calls a few months ago.

More worried that Vidalin will get roasted at the trial than Tracy, Garza asks Lucinda to pull Paula's phone records, just as Al informs that he finally found Tracy's so-called confession. Everyone gathers round to watch the DVD. Detective Darby asks Tracy whether she should pray for forgiveness for forcing the dead cop's three kids to grow up without a father, and she says yes. One word in 21 hours and 43 hours of interrogation! Mereta thinks it could mean anything, but since Tracy was read her Miranda rights, it could be admissible. Garza knows a confession must be knowing and voluntary to be admissible. Clearly, Tracy meant to remain silent since she didn't say anything for the first 21 hours of her interrogation. He plans to file a motion to suppress.

The next day, as Garza and Al enter the suppression hearing through a gauntlet of reporters, all the cops turn their backs. Inman puts Detective Darby on the stand to describe what happened on the night in question and play Tracy's confession tape. Garza points out that Tracy's admission came down to one word. She had a legal right to remain silent, and 21 hours of silence clearly illustrates her intent to use that right. Inman objects. If Tracy wanted to remain silent, she had to say so. When Garza claims Darby wore Tracy down, Inman snorts. That's what interrogation's all about wearing people down. Clearly annoyed with Garza, the judge suggests he should have established that a person can invoke their rights by doing nothing before he left the Supreme Court.

Afterwards, Al and Garza meet with Tracy. Garza tells her to stay positive; Inman still has to prove she knew about the robbery prior to its occurrence. Upset, Tracy claims she didn't sneak around the back or jack open the door; all she did was wait in the car. Once she's left, Vidalin lays into Garza in the hallway, claiming he's screwing up. Garza cracks, accusing Vidalin of ransacking his home and having him followed. Vidalin swears on his mother's grave that he did no such thing. A lot of people wanted Garza dead after he left the court; Vidalin only wants him lightly grilled. After he huffs off, Al points out what Tracy said: how did she know Lonnie jacked open the door if she was sitting in the car? Explaining he's known Tracy all his life, Garza chooses to believe in her innocence. The father of a teenaged daughter himself, Al warns all is usually not what it seems.

On the way to check out the apartment building Lonnie robbed with Eddie, Mereta reads off the list of numbers tattooed on Lucinda's arm. What could they mean? After using a GPS to check the location of the apartment building, Mereta thinks the numbers are coordinates, and starts plugging them in, to make a discovery. Garza assembles the team to tackle the problem of Tracy's confession. Al has learned that Paula received 63 crank calls over 10 days, which Lucinda volunteers to check against Tracy's diary. According to Eddie, the calls originated from the phone of Grant Dinges, a classmate and perhaps former boyfriend of Tracy. Lucinda promises to check him out, too.

Eddie and Mereta report on their door-to-door canvas of the apartment building. No one knew Tracy or Lonnie, but they did get a tenant list. Garza pales Paula Munger is one of the tenants! If the prosecution has the tenant list, Vidalin and mistress will surely be smeared in court and clearly Tracy is lying about something. The next day, Tracy insists she's not lying. She did tell Lonnie about Paula, but only how she felt about her. It doesn't prove Lonnie broke into Paula's apartment, especially since Tracy didn't know Paula lived there until just now. When Al brings up the tenant list, Tracy asks Garza to put her on the stand. She's not sure what she's going to say, but it's going to be the truth.

Just as the trial is getting underway, Al slips Garza an iPod containing Lucinda's interview with crank caller Grant Dinges. Garza calls Tracy to the stand. Tracy claims her mistake was thinking she loved Lonnie; she had no idea that he was going to break into the apartment building, nor that he had a gun. She asks for forgiveness during the interrogation because she wanted God to forgive her for ever getting involved with Lonnie. On cross, Tracy tells Inman she was stupid to fall for a bad boy. Al and Garza's relief that Inman doesn't have the tenant list is short-lived, as Tracy testifies that prior to the night in question, Lonnie raped her and threatened to destroy her family if she ever said anything about it.

Afterwards, Tracy tells Garza she didn't think he needed to know about the rape. When Garza asks if she's saying whatever it takes to win, Tracy smirks; somebody has to. Garza plays Grant's interview. According to Grant, Tracy went crazy with hatred for Paula, using his phone to make the crank calls. When he refused her request to break into Paula's apartment, Tracy dumped him and started dating Lonnie. Tracy claims Grant was jealous, but Garza's already filled in the blanks. Tracy set Lonnie up to go after Paula and now, because of her riveting confession, the DA's offered her a deal, five years for voluntary manslaughter. Tracy prefers to take her chances with the jury. After all, she's got a Supreme Court justice for a lawyer. She did her job; now it's time for Garza to do his. Tracy bangs on the door to end the meeting, leaving Garza with his chin on the ground.

Inman's closing argument resonates with Garza, as he now knows Tracy is guilty. When it's Garza's turn, he hits the ball out of the park. Inman hasn't one shred of evidence that Tracy knew about the burglary beforehand. Perhaps for Garza, it still comes down to that one word confession, which shouldn't be admissible. He tells the jury that if they follow the law, they'll set Tracy free. Al and Garza retreat to a bar where Garza gets stinking drunk on tequila shots. He claims his glass is a metaphor: when he took the case he was full of righteous conviction over a young girl whose confession was coerced and permitted by a broken system. Now he's just empty. Calling for a refill, Garza laments there's no justice in Delaware.

That night, Mereta and Eddie go off in search of an address in Delaware - the GPS coordinates tattooed on Lucinda's arm. Is this why Lucinda refused to come to Delaware? The coordinates lead them to a cemetery. Creeped out, Mereta wants to leave, until she trips over a headstone and finds something very interesting... The next day, the jury declares Tracy not guilty. After a tearful reunion, Vidalin thanks Garza for getting the jury to see his daughter for who she really is. Surrounded by the media, Tracy turns to Garza with a little smile and wave before returning home with her parents. Garza just stands there, looking like he wants to stick a fork in his eye.