This week’s CONVICTION comes in the wake of the network’s decision to cut the number of episodes in the season down to 10. While this is not an official cancelation, it does not bode well for the future of the freshman legal procedural. But, despite this setback, CONVICTION looks to tackle ever-present issues in the world today.
The team will move forward with CONVICTION’s weekly cases, trying to find if justice has been rightly served to those in prison. This week, Hayes and her team tackle a racially-charged case which has its members on opposite sides.
The subject is a young African American woman convicted of killing a white police officer when a protest she participated in turned violent. Frankie, a Latino man and an ex-convict himself, defends the woman, saying that her trial was moved out of the city and her jury consisted of all white jurors. But when the conversation turns to why the police showed up to a peaceful protest in riot gear, Maxine (the cop who also happens to be a black woman) offers the truthful insight that a glass bottle thrown at a cop hurts the same amount, wether it is a white or black man throwing it.
In addition to the clearly charged racial bias of the case, Maxine herself faces a dilemma in her personal life. Through her investigation she is having trouble reconciling all parts of her identity. When she visits her father to discuss it, she explains her fears that a black person is all the world sees of her, and all the world will see of her son. She then asks advice of her father on how to raise a black son in America, where racism and racial bias are seemingly everywhere. Her father responds with poignant wisdom that all she can do as a strong and moral woman is raise her son right.
Don’t miss an all new CONVICTION tonight (November 14) at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.
