A Rare Win For Wallace
With no Cassius this week, For Life instead focuses on its central issues surrounding Wallace and his trial. With Easley Barton by his side, Aaron goes on the attack but once again the DA has a few tricks up their sleeve. This time though, the shark is wounded and as the episode ends, it sets the scene nicely for the episodes to come as Wallace fights for his freedom. Episode 9 of For Life begins with Marie phoning Darius and leaving him a message, asking to explain just why he’s left. At the same time, Wallace speaks to his contact inside the prison, Easley Barton, desperate to represent him so he can undermine Maskins. With Henry by his side, Wallace presents the evidence he’s uncovered and presses to go ahead with representing him. It’s here Wallace pores over audio recordings and learns the truth about what happened. That night Easley did have an argument, approximately an hour before the robbery occurred. Given how bad that looks, he intentionally missed this from his statement the first time around. For now though, they stick with Henry looking through the files where he uncovers a lead – Anna Fernandez. It turns out she was traumatized by the case and changed her name, carving out a new life for herself. Henry finds her and pleads with the woman to talk about the case with him. With more clarity around what really happened, Henry feeds back what he’s learnt to Wallace and pushes him to go forward with the case to implicate Maskins. After some contemplation, Easley decides to go ahead with the case and heads back to the courtroom. Meanwhile, the Captain arrives at the prison looking ragged and exhausted, clearly rattled after Cassius made it clear he owns him. At the same time, Safiya speaks to one of the inmates, Frankie, pleading with him to help her with the drug problem inside the prison. Eventually he caves and admits that Cassius is the catalyst for most of the problems there at the moment. Maskins meanwhile learns about Henry looking into the Easley case and it clearly rattles him, promptly phoning his wife and informing her of the situation. She tells him to keep his game face on though given they have a fundraiser coming up. Safiya speaks to Frank about Cassius and promises she’ll do her best to defend him if he’ll help take the criminal down. Instead, the Captain hands over his letter of resignation and promises to be out of her hair within 2 weeks. Marie returns home, hopeful that Darius is there, but instead finds Jasmine and her friend. It turns out Jasmine has started a new Facebook group called “Save Aaron Wallace” and within the comment section are a group of people talking about a girl who ODed at the club, something that was clearly omitted from Aaron’s case. Marie does some digging and finds the name Spencer Richardson. At the court house, Wallace presents his witness, along with the home invasion and Anna Fernandez link, which the Judge agrees matches up. Anna relays her awful ordeal to the court, including the duct tape and a strange knife. The knife was curved with a gold and black handle while the duct tape was tied in the same fashion as that from the robbery. In the aftermath of this, Henry praises Anna for her part in the case and how she may have saved Easley’s life with her testimony. And save it she does – the Judge allows a retrial to go ahead and green-lights them doing DNA on the knife. Determined to bury the case once and for all, Burke conducts a press conference and informs the public that they’re releasing six prisoners immediately – including Easley. While this is great news for him, it also means another road block for Wallace as he’s not one of those names and can’t use this to testify against Maskins. With Easley now free and Wallace seeing him off, our protagonist decides that now is the time to push for a retrial. With Henry by his side and the DA on the ropes, there’s never been a more opportune time to do just that. There’s lots of questions hanging over this one and plenty of drama to digest too, as For Life delivers another decent episode, one that pushes forward our main case while Aaron gets some much needed luck on his side. Wallace has always been up against the ropes for much of the season but seeing him finally fighting back is a great message to never give up and that tenacity certainly shows through his character. With less than a handful of episodes left, For Life looks set for an exciting final run of episodes but whether Aaron will get the result he so desperately needs from his possible retrial remains to be seen.
