S02.E04: Justin’s Story

[Snazzy Daisy]

Quote

A wrestling coach (Michael Chiklis) is on trial after pushing his star athlete too far.

Air Date: Nov 12, 2024

 

Other Cast — Sherri Saum, Andrew Liner, Trevor White, Lee Tergesen.

[AnimeMania]

Michael Chiklis as Justin
Lee Tergesen as Rob 
Sherri Saum as Erica 
Andrew Liner as TJ and Nico 
Stephen Thomas Kalyn as Tyson 
Stephen McHattie as Joe
Trevor White 

[Snazzy Daisy]

A weak case as Justin didn’t supply the steroid. And the individual who supplied it to TJ is given a deal by the DA office.

Justin shouldn’t have sacrificed everything for the “love of his life”. 

Erica will live with the guilt for the rest of her life.

A compelling performance by Michael Chiklis. 👏🏻

[Chicago Redshirt]

Michael Chiklis did his usual good job. 

But it does seem a stretch that he'd be found guilty under the circumstances.

Here's the definition of involuntary manslaughter in Pennsylvania:

§ 2504.  Involuntary manslaughter.

(a)  General rule.--A person is guilty of involuntary manslaughter when as a direct result of the doing of an unlawful act in a reckless or grossly negligent manner, or the doing of a lawful act in a reckless or grossly negligent manner, he causes the death of another person.

So there are lots of things Justin did in the case, but I'm not sure that any of them could be said to be "reckless or grossly negligent."

They include;

Pushing Wrestler so hard that he felt like he had to roid up

Not ratting out Wrestler when he discovered Wrestler was dirty

Not sidelining Wrestler

Helping Wrestler pass the drug screening

Making Wrestler go cold turkey on the roids rather than having him taper off.

But even if one would say that these acts were reckless/grossly negligent, I don't see how one could say they caused Wrestler's death.

Edited November 14 by Chicago Redshirt

[possibilities]

He had a duty to report the steroid use when he discovered it, and instead he covered it up-- not only by not telling anyone, but also by providing the clean urine for the drug test. 

I get why he was charged.

And I think he spared the mom because he was trying to protect the surviving child. 

 

[Chicago Redshirt]

3 hours ago, possibilities said:

He had a duty to report the steroid use when he discovered it, and instead he covered it up-- not only by not telling anyone, but also by providing the clean urine for the drug test. 

I get why he was charged.

And I think he spared the mom because he was trying to protect the surviving child. 

 

Sometimes I wonder if the jury gets to know what we the audience knows. and how. Presumably, the only people who know that Justin gave clean urine to Wrestler are Justin and TJ, and TJ died before he could say anything. Justin would be pretty dumb to admit to it. I guess the wrestling authorities might have analyzed the sample, figured it was clean, figured that given Justin's cause of death involved steroid use that someone switched the sample, and since Justin was in the restroom at the time, might have been involved. 

I think that even if you point to all of Justin's actions and call them reckless/grossly negligent, it's a tough thing to argue that those actions were the cause of Wrestler dying, directly. Yes, TJ would not have competed without Justin's help/intervention, and yes, TJ died because he competed. But I think that oversimplifies the notion of causing the death. Sometimes I think it would be better as civil trials. I could more easily see Justin found liable for the death because of the lower standard of proof than I could him being guilty of it beyond a reasonable doubt.

The way that would need to be proved would be through expert testimony, not Justin getting asked about Icarus and Daedalus and what not.

I think that you could make the defense that Justin was aware that Wrestler passed a medical screening and therefore did not have any reason to believe that the steroid use (or cutting him off from it cold turkey) might cause the death without throwing Erica under the bus. 

[possibilities]

His original plan was to use the medical exam, but if that had been introduced as evidence, it would have been subjected to scrutiny, and discovered that it was fraudulent.

I think the cases on this show are always, or usually, meant to be moral gray areas. I think we're being asked to think it was understandable what he did, and actually what everyone did-- Justin, the mom, the kid, the dad, the jury. It's messy. I think it's meant to be messy. And the results are also messy. The kid who sold TK the drugs is perhaps the most morally culpable, and he's the one who got a deal with the least consequences. But then, we don't know what his motivation was, either. Maybe his family was desperate for money for some reason, or maybe he was just a kid and didn't know better, or maybe he is actually an immoral opportunist and just exploited the situation for fun. We don't know.

I am not a lawyer, but I think manslaughter means your actions were not legally justified (as in self-defense) and if you had done what you were obligated to do (or not done what you mistakenly did), the death would not have occurred. It's not the same as murder, which involves intent to harm, but it means you acted wrongly and if you hadn't, the person would still be alive. I might be wrong about this, but I think that's what it means.

So, in this case, Justin was a mandatory reporter who did not do his legal duty. If he had, then the kid would not have competed and would not have died. He also would have been discovered to be abusing steroids and that would have been stopped, and he would have received medical attention, which would also have also meant no steroid-induced death.

That we live in a world where people make choices that are legally wrong, even if they have good intentions and complicated motivations and might be arguably justified as a necessary evil or understandable and forgivable under the circumstances, is a hard thing to reckon with, but it does happen.

People go to prison for all kinds of stuff in the USA, not all of which is morally depraved or impossible to understand-- like marijuana possession and/or distribution, and other crimes that may well be for reasons like: "I was stressed out and smoking made me feel better" or "I can make a lot more money selling grass than working at a minimum wage job" or "I was desperate for the money to feed my kids and pay the rent and get my child's medicine and so I stole XYZ and used the money for that purpose". 

Most tv and movies portray crime as much more black and white than this, and I really like how this show challenges us to be ambivalent about the outcomes or to question whether the system is operating in the way we'd want it to, if all the factors were considered.

[Starchild]

6 hours ago, possibilities said:

The kid who sold TK the drugs is perhaps the most morally culpable, and he's the one who got a deal with the least consequences. But then, we don't know what his motivation was, either. Maybe his family was desperate for money for some reason, or maybe he was just a kid and didn't know better, or maybe he is actually an immoral opportunist and just exploited the situation for fun. We don't know.

Even that is messy, because we saw the kid urging TK to be careful, slow down. We didn't see/hear how the altercation in the locker room started. Maybe TK was intimidating him, or threatening exposure, in order to keep his supply going.

[Halting Hex]

The cast was great (there's really no point for Stephen McHattie to be in it, but I always enjoy him), the situation was intriguing, the mislead (when we don't know that TJ is twins and we think Nico being in the court is TJ and it's actually Lee Tergesen's Rob who died) was clever…and the execution was, as all too often, poor.

It's laughable, of course, that Justin would be called as a prosecution witness.  Indeed, as the accused, I believe that's a black-letter 5th Amendment violation, right there.  Now, they could have finessed this by doing a time-lapse to show Chiklis already on the stand and having the D.A. say "Mr [Chiklis], you testified that [blah-blah-blah]", making it clear that this is cross-examination, but that didn't happen.  And if Justin had already testified on direct, his lawyer would have entered the medical exam into evidence, and he's cleared, right there.

(I don't care if Justin doesn't want it into evidence, the attorney has an ethical obligation to "zealously represent" the client's interests.  Withholding exculpatory evidence while staying on the case is probably a disbarrable offense.  The attorney doesn't represent Erica, he represents Justin.  All he has to do is go "Your Honor, I'd like to enter this [holds exam] into evidence as Defense Exhibit #1", show it to Justin and ask him to identify it.  No need to ask if Justin ever learned it was a forgery, no likelihood the prosecution would ever try to subpoena "Dr. Powell" to verify evidence that seems to wreck their case, and as long as the attorney never states that Justin never suspected TJ was on roids, he's not suborning perjury.  Just keep it to "and this form states that TJ was drug-free, correct?" and let the matter stand there. 

The fact that Justin discovered that the form was a forgery after TJ was dead is in no way germane to the actions Justin undertook while TJ was alive.  Also, if anybody ever suspects that the form is a forgery, there's no way to prove that Erica was the one who forged it; it could just have easily been TJ.)

So instead they skip over the possibility of any direct testimony and instead open with the DA asking Justin about Daedalaus and Icarus, which shouldn't even need an objection to get shut down.  The moral responsibility of fictional characters is hardly a fit subject for testimony.

(Also, nobody pronounces the name "DAY-da-lus".  The American pronunciation is "DED-uh-lus", where as the British say "DEED-a-lus".  Moral: don't make Greek myths a plot point if none of the actors know what you're talking about.)

Furthermore, the whole "you need to taper off from steroids, jerk!" line of questioning should have been thrown out for irrelevance, since none of the the possible side-effects that the DA recited had anything to do with cardiac incidents.  TJ didn't die from joint pain.  Unless the DA can prove that cutting of the roids cold turkey causes heart attacks, specifically, that's all irrelevant.

And I know that Justin feels guilty because he helped TJ fake the piss test, but that's not actually the case, either.  It's not as if the urinalysis is done instantly and TJ would have been disqualified and wouldn't have wrestled the finals; any exposure and penalties would have happened after-the-fact.  So that's unnecessary guilt.

I can't find any documentation that mandatory reporter laws (which are there to guard against child abuse) extend to the use of steroids in athletics.  Justin might well have been in violation of the ethics of the State Athletics Commission (or whatever governing body was administering the piss tests), but I find no indication that this violates Pennsylvania criminal statutes. He can be barred from coaching, but not thrown behind bars, AFAICT. JMO, IANAL, etc.

Edited Monday at 08:04 PM by Halting Hex