The Retrial
All Rise returns this week with another strong episode, focusing on one of Lola’s old cases as it resurfaces with a retrial. This latest chapter gives us some interesting character development for our main character, as she questions her actions and has to face her old nemesis. The episode begins with Lola arriving at the courthouse to a very busy day and without coffee. After finding out about the retrial and that her old nemesis Felice has returned, Lola presides over a false prescription case. Felice arrives in the gallery and ends up disturbing the floor by making annoying sounds with her mouth everytime Lola speaks. Emily’s client is Willy, accused of having conspired to murder the judge who put him in prison and planned to have him put through a wood chipper. As she meets her client, she explains that the evidence against him is strong as he wrote emails describing exactly what he was planning to do. After pressing him on the matter, he suddenly claims that he’s mentally incompetent. Felice meets with Mark to discuss the retrial; Cody Kopple is accused of carrying a terrorist attack in a bookstore two years ago. He tells her that the appeal is pointless as his fingerprints were found on the detonator and believes she is doing it to win one over Lola. She tells him she’s not there for a plea bargain and believes she can win this time. As Mark meets with Lola to discuss the appeal, we flashback to two years ago where we see Lola delivering her opening statement for the case against Kopple whose attack killed a 23 year old woman. As they continue talking, Lola reveals to Mark that she mistakenly promised her father to get justice as she was sure he was guilty and felt sorry for the father. Mark’s new clerk, Samantha, helps him when he finds out that the fingerprint expert from the case just died of a heart attack. As we get more flashbacks of the previous trial, we find out that Kopple was a racist and a member of several alt-right organisations. The trial continues but things don’t look good for Mark as he finds out the fingerprints are inconclusive and has trouble convincing Choke, a witness from the previous trial, to come and testify due to his bad experience last time. Meanwhile, Lola clashes with the prosecutor lawyer about her ethics during the prescription case. She calls a recess then decides to meet with Felice who questions her about her methods. After arguing over the case, Mark visits Choke again who eventually admits he knew Kopple was going to carry out the attack, showing him a video of him getting ready for the bombing. Meanwhile, Lopez heads back to her client and dumps him as she knows he’s lying. Eventually, the lawyers agree on a plea bargain for him. Back in her trial, Lola apologises to both lawyers for being a bit too aggressive and promises to make sure it won’t happen again, while Mark shows Felice the video. After some deliberation, Kopple gets life in prison. We then end the episode with Emily and Sara agreeing to be roommates while Mark and Lola talk about the day they just had as per usual. All Rise is back with a very interesting chapter this one, one that had me thinking quite a bit. It touches on Lola’s ethics as a lawyer and judge while Felice makes a good point when she asked Lola if she put people in jail because she believed they are guilty and not because of the evidence. This must be quite the difficult tasks for lawyers and judges to be impartial in those kind of horrific cases, especially when having to deal with the victim’s family. All Rise remains quite the decent drama, and although it may not be 100% accurate in terms of what happens in the courtroom, there’s plenty of character development and interesting cases to paper over this fact. This week offered up one of its strongest episodes thanks to its storyline.
