The decomposed corpse of Arianna Marchetti washes up into a river. Briscoe and Green's initial suspect is her husband; the couple planned to divorce, and he may have killed his wife to prevent her getting custody of their daughter. But Southerlyn is wary of Ravi Patel, an in-demand lawyer that the victim hired for her upcoming divorce case. Patel has a history of inflating expenses with the approval of Judge Ruth Alexander, a judge in the courthouse where Arianna worked as a clerk.
Southerlyn learns that most of Alexander's cases are represented by the same three lawyers. This indicates her docket is rigged, so Southerlyn leans on one of the other lawyers involved. He confesses he would pay a bribe for Alexander to take his cases and rule in his favor; and Patel was doing the same. Arianna could not afford Patel's fees, so she could have tried to blackmail him into representing her with the threat of exposing the fraud. But the evidence suggests Alexander is the one who killed Arianna.
McCoy confronts Patel with phone records that implicate him in the murder; he agrees to testify against Alexander. She tells McCoy that her own divorce left her bankrupt, and she felt she was owed something for having to listen to the petty squabbles of rich people in her court every day. When McCoy reveals the evidence against her, Alexander breaks down and says she didn't intend to hurt Arianna. She accepts a plea and Branch, her former mentor, is left deeply disappointed by events.
This episode contains examples of:
- Asshole Victim: Arianna knew about Judge Alexander and the crooked lawyers rigging cases. Instead of reporting them, she tried to blackmail them into overturning a prenup, even though that wasn’t possible.
- Believing Their Own Lies: Judge Alexander told Jack she never made a ruling that harmed a child. She seemed sincere even though it had already been established that she awarded custody to an alcoholic narcissist.
- Broken Pedestal: Branch was Alexander's former mentor and is shaken by the allegations against her.
- Domestic Abuse: Subverted - the detectives think Arianna's husband was violent because she had facial injuries at the time of her death, but it turns out they were caused in a car accident. Played straight when one witness testifies that Alexander ruled against him despite clear evidence of his wife's emotional abuse.
- Entitled Bitch: Judge Alexander tries to get Jack’s sympathy by calling her ex-husband a worthless jerk who ruined her life, and justified her corruption by saying that between alimony and taxes she couldn’t make ends meet. Since the ex-husband was never shown on-screen, his personality was an Informed Flaw. The judge lives in a doorman building in a very expensive neighborhood, drives a luxury car, and one of her accomplices said that she drives a new car every year. It seems that she turned to crime because she couldn’t handle the thought of having to take the subway.
- Halfway Plot Switch: The first half of the episode is about the detectives investigating Mr. Marchetti's potential involvement in Arianna's death. The second half details the case against Alexander.
- It's All About Me: This is Alexander's justification for why she rigged divorce cases. McCoy is clearly disgusted with her lack of concern for the welfare of children involved.
- Karma Houdini: Patel suffers no real consequences for his role in Arianna's death, since it would be difficult for McCoy to prove Patel knew Alexander intended to kill her. Downplayed since he would likely receive prison time for the bribery and case-rigging.
- Moral Myopia: Arianna wanted to destroy her husband financially as punishment for cheating on her, and was willing to blackmail a lawyer and a judge to make it happen, even though she was the other woman in his first marriage and his first wife warned her that he would do it again.
- Oh, Crap!: Alexander’s reaction when she realized Jack didn’t just know about the case-rigging, he knew about the murder.
