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This week’s show - featuring a "right to die/murder/I-went-through-the-same-thing-when-I-was-fifteen" case and an "I didn’t rape-and-kill her but-they-are-going-to-put-me-to-death-in-a- matter-of-weeks" case - is watchable only under the influence of a lot of St. John’s Wort.

The first case, Commonwealth v. Simpson, is ultimately just a vehicle for introducing us to Bobby’s father (played by Charles Durning) and for disclosing the fact that, when he was fifteen, Bobby turned off his mother’s respirator at his father’s request. Does anyone else see the nervous breakdown coming right as Lindsay asks Bobby to address wedding invitations?

The case against Simpson is a fairly typical mercy killing case. His wife had been suffering from ovarian cancer for years. She was in extreme pain and longing for it to end. She was likely to die within two days when her husband decided she had suffered enough. He put a gun to her head and shot her. It was an act of love. Really.

I confess my first thought was that the NRA could start a whole new public relations campaign based on the new slogan: "Guns do kill people - sometimes." I could probably come up with a better slogan with more time though. My sister Nancy, who is hysterical, could come up with something really clever and funny. Anyway, whenever I hear about such "acts of love" I think of the lady who picked up a shotgun and let her husband have both barrels in the head. When she was asked about it afterwards, she said, "Well, I pulled the trigger sort of soft because I had been very fond of him."

Simpson was charged with first-degree murder and second degree murder. This is a clear case of overcharging by the prosecution. The question that arises at least five times over the course of the show is why Simpson wasn’t charged with manslaughter - a charge to which he would have pled guilty. Helen Gamble, who is prosecuting the case, provides no comprehensible answer. At some point she says something about the fact that killing has become too common and she is drawing one of those lines in the sand to make sure people who kill are punished. But of course that contention makes no sense since a person who is convicted of manslaughter is punished for killing too.

From a legal perspective, there were two other questionable calls this week.

First, the jury deliberating the Simpson verdict sends a question to the judge as to whether it can come back with a guilty verdict for manslaughter - a crime with which Simpson was not charged. The jury was charged on murder one and murder two, meaning that the judge explained to them the elements of only these two specific crimes and sketched out the legal requirements that would have to be met for a finding of guilty under either theory. It makes little sense that a jury would, on its own volition, ask a judge if it could find the defendant guilty of a crime the defendant was not charged with, where the requirements of that crime had not been explained to them. Of course, the judge was correct in responding that the jury could do no such thing. On the other hand, even though the prosecutor did not charge Simpson with manslaughter, the judge could have, and probably in real life would have, included a charge for manslaughter on her own to the jury.

Second, in her closing, Helen implores the jury not to be lenient, asserting that if there is any cause for leniency it can be exercised at the sentencing phase. After the closing, Bobby jumps all over her and requests that the judge explain to the jury that if Simpson is found guilty of second-degree murder there can be no leniency because he must be sentenced to life with parole. The judge’s refusal to do as Bobby asks is a mistake. The jury could readily base its decision on Helen’s incorrect version of the law. The failure to correct this mistake before the jury goes to deliberate would give Simpson a valid grounds for an appeal.

In the second case of the episode, Stuart Donovan sits on death row in Pennsylvania (Massachusetts has no death penalty). On rather slim evidence, Stuart was found guilty of raping and murdering his girlfriend, Melissa Kearns, then murdering her mother. A DNA test in 1992, conducted after the trial, was inconclusive. The rape kit, containing the DNA evidence, is missing. The Pennsylvania Governor has signed Stuart’s death warrant and he is five weeks from execution. Stuart’s mother comes to Boston and hires Ellenor Frutt for one day.

It’s money well-spent.

Ellenor is able to track down the missing rape kit containing the killer’s semen. Unimpressed, the prosecutor refuses to consent to a new DNA test. Why? Don’t be silly. Because he is serving justice, as a friend of mine put it. So Ellenor files a motion with the Court for a new DNA test. But the judge is a bad man. How do I know? Because he was smoking a cigarette on the bench. That puts him right up there with Judas, Mussolini, and my fourth grade teacher. The bad judge reasons that while new evidence might be a sufficient ground for reopening the case, all Stuart seeks is re-evaluation of old evidence. Frutt, who is sufficiently ticked off by this reception, decides that she has a friend in Pennsylvania who needs her help. She stays. Case continued.

And as a final footnote: I was amused by the subtlety in one scene in which the anorexic Helen Gamble has dinner with her roommate, the zaftig Ellenor Frutt. Fittingly, after an argument, Helen storms away from the table without having touched her dinner.

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