The Good Wife Exposes A Judge

The Good Wife‘s Alicia represents many people from all walks of life.  This time, she’s representing a nine year-old child who was threatened and ended up hurting another child.

Terrance is a good kid.  He likes to read and he’s smart.   A bully as school threatens to beat him up and, fed up with it, Terrance throws one of his books at the bully.  He ends up doing some damage dislocating the boy’s eye socket.  Alicia tells Terrance to take a guilty plea and get probation.  Judge Baxter however sees it differently and puts Terrance in a detention center for nine months.

Alicia (Julianna Marguiles) suspects Baxter of being racist.  The kids he sends to juvenile detention are all minorities, while the white kids get probation.  She thinks of taking it to Will, but Baxter is his best friend.  She goes to Diane, whom just was approached by the Chief Justice and asked to run for judge.  Diane (Christine Baranski) tells her to get a large sample and show the bias.  Even when the Chief Justice approaches her and tells her to stop pursing Baxter, Diane sticks to her guns and tells Alicia to go for it.

Kalinda and Cary discover the bias started happening after June 2008.  Kalinda talks to a cop friend of hers who tells her that Baxter’s wife was attacked and possibly raped by an African-American man that same summer.  They think this is why he’s biased until they hit a road block.  The racial profiling doesn’t fit the bill.  Frustrated, Kalinda turns to Will.  Will discovers after looking at the files that all of the children sent to a detention center by Baxter are sent to the same facility.  After further investigation it’s discovered that Baxter has a gambling habit and has been getting kickback money from the facility for sending children there.  Will confronts his friend and tells him he’s going to jail.

The Chief Justice apologizes to Terrance and his record is wiped clean.  However, she tells Diane that she won’t be supported if she runs for judge.  Diane doesn’t seem to mind.  I wouldn’t either.

I don’t have children (not yet anyway) but watching what happened to Terrance and his mother just tugged at my heart strings.  I sincerely hope that the people we trust to judge our courts aren’t as corrupt as the fictional characters in this episode.