Law & Order (1990) s23e02 Episode Script
Human Innovation
1
In the criminal justice system,
the people are represented
by two separate,
yet equally important groups:
the police, who investigate crime,
and the district attorneys,
who prosecute the offenders.
These are their stories.
Okay, stress me on checkers or chess ♪
I don't play by the rules
if you guessed it ♪
We about to run it up, run it up ♪
We about to run it up,
run it up, run ♪
We about to run it up, run it up ♪
[ENGINE REVVING] [ALARM BLARING]
[TENSE MUSIC]
♪
[GUN CLICKS]
[SIREN WAILING]
Hell of a way to start your day, huh?
Yeah, I'm not sure it's
actually started yet.
Not a morning person?
Oh, I love a morning.
4:00 a.m.? Still last night.
What are we looking at?
Oh, DOA, took one in the chest.
No wallet, no phone.
Bodega owner down the street
heard the shot around 2:00 a.m.
and called it in
but didn't see anything.
Okay.
Pricey clothes.
Bet he had an expensive watch too.
Yeah.
Could be looking at
an old-fashioned robbery.
- Maybe.
- Detectives.
We found this in the bushes over there.
- Thank you.
- Empty.
So the killer took the cash,
tossed the wallet.
Evan Marks.
- The tech guy.
- CEO of VenZip?
Damn, VenZip is how I pay
for everything these days.
- You don't use it?
- No, man.
I'm not trusting my bank info to an app.
[LAUGHS]
Okay, so the headquarters
is across the street.
He's at the office late.
The guy's a billionaire,
bragging about the fact
that he's about to single-
handedly make cash obsolete.
So what's a guy like that
doing at an ATM
at 2:00 in the morning?
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
♪
Bank records confirm Evan Marks
made a withdrawal from the ATM
just before the shooting.
Thanks.
2 grand, maximum amount allowed.
That's a lot of money
for that hour of night.
Mm.
We're agreeing to call it night now.
Hey, does anyone know
who James Sawyer is?
Yeah, he's like a god in the tech world.
Well, apparently,
he is also a co-founder
of our vic's company.
Evan Marks and James Sawyer
are like the dream team
of Silicon Valley
or at least they were.
Well, Sawyer just posted this
on his social media.
"Evan Marks was one
of the greatest minds
"of our generation.
The NYPD should be ashamed.
"Violent street crime is out of control,
and Evan's blood is on their hands."
So Marks's murder
is somehow our fault now?
Well, apparently, according
to James Sawyer, it is.
And that guy has got
millions of followers
that worship him as a genius.
And every one of them
is reposting this nonsense.
Look, we gotta wrap this up.
What do we got?
We tried pinging Marks's stolen phone,
but we didn't get anything.
Killer likely turned it off.
Still canvassing for video,
but so far, nothing.
But he still slipped up.
Techs were able to lift a partial print
from Marks's wallet, and I got a hit.
Blake Hughes, also known as G-Ticket.
- G-Ticket?
- He's a rapper.
And it actually looks like he's
pretty popular on SoundCloud.
But what is of interest
is his list of priors
possession with intent to sell,
aggravated assault,
robbery in the first degree.
Go, go.
[HIP-HOP MUSIC PLAYING INDISTINCTLY]
♪
That part was fire.
Yo, yo, yo. What's going on?
Can I help you?
Yeah, NYPD, my guy.
We need to talk
to your friend right there.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
- Come on. Let's go.
- Oh, come on.
- Hey!
- Yo!
♪
[GROANS]
Get off me!
- I ain't done nothing.
- Yeah?
Well, we both know that's not true.
Just stop, all right? Stop.
Stop.
Give me your arm. Give me your arm.
Well, this looks like 2,000 bucks.
Blake Hughes, you're under arrest.
We know it was you.
Your cell phone data puts you
in the Meatpacking District
last night, right around the area
Marks was murdered.
We got your fingerprints on his wallet.
We caught you with his
phone and his watch.
Nah, man, that ain't it.
Look, I was there, but
I knew the guy. We were friends.
Oh, you and Evan Marks were friends.
I gotta hear this one.
We met last year at Coachella.
He was a fan of my music.
All right, so what were you doing
outside his place of business
at 2:00 a.m. last night?
He asked me to come meet him.
He he would buy off of me sometimes.
Dude love to party.
I mean, party.
Like, he wanted ketamine, acid, shrooms.
Okay, so you were there
to sell him drugs.
Just so we're clear,
I'm out of that game.
- [LAUGHS]
- Clearly.
I would make an exception for Evan.
That stuff you found,
I mean, I only had it
because I wanted to stay
on his good side, you know?
Look, I was hoping
he'd give me money to
to produce my album.
Okay, so just help me out.
What went wrong? Why did you shoot him?
I didn't.
When I got there, he was already
arguing with some other guy.
So I didn't wanna get involved.
I hung back, stayed out of sight.
They started yelling at each other.
Next thing I knew, there was a gunshot,
and the other dude ran off.
And how did you end up with
Marks's money and his watch?
After the guy ran away,
I went to go check on Evan,
see if he was okay.
But he was already dead.
So you're telling me
you robbed your dead friend?
Look, I'm not proud of it,
but studio time is expensive.
All right, in any event,
you didn't happen to get a good look
at this other guy, did you?
No, but I did overhear
some of their conversation.
Their argument, they were
They were fighting over a woman.
What makes you say that?
The dude said,
"You turned her against me,"
or something like that.
And Marks was all,
"She doesn't need you anymore."
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
♪
We found some pretty raunchy texts
between you and Evan Marks.
What was the nature of
your relationship with him?
Oh, God.
I've known Evan forever.
We first met in Aspen, I think.
Were you two romantically involved?
You mean, were we sleeping together?
Yeah, sometimes.
But we weren't dating or anything.
It was just two friends exploring,
finding joy together.
You know anybody who might
have been jealous of this joy?
Jealous of me and Evan
sleeping together?
No.
Hey, Lace.
I have to be at the gallery till 3:00,
so I picked us up some lunch.
Afternoon.
What's going on?
Detective Riley.
This is Detective Shaw.
And you are?
Craig Walsh.
Is this about Evan?
It is.
How well do you know him?
Mm, well.
He officiated our wedding.
- You guys are married?
- Yeah.
Mr. Walsh, where were you
last night around 2:00 a.m.?
[SCOFFS]
I want a lawyer.
Magic word, okay.
Call him to the precinct.
♪
Spoke to your doorman.
According to him, you and your wife
didn't get home last night
until after 4:00 a.m.
Which does not look good since Marks
was killed around 2:00.
I would never kill Evan.
I loved the guy.
Bet you didn't love him
sleeping with your wife, though, huh?
Lacy and I have an open marriage.
Okay.
Then where were you last night?
It'll be fine.
Just tell them.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
I was at the VenZip offices.
So was Lacy.
So you were with him Evan Marks.
And a lot of other people.
There was a party.
Oh, yeah?
What kind of party was that?
There's an underground scene for people
of a certain caliber.
It's called the Lifestyle.
- Lifestyle?
- I did not name it.
Evan was super into the whole thing.
It was his idea to throw one
of the parties at his office.
You know, you really didn't
need a lawyer to tell us this.
We're talking about
an invite-only situation here.
And people that attend
these things are big time.
Guests have to sign
a non-disclosure agreement.
I wanted to make sure
I wouldn't get in trouble.
And what kind of things
are going on at this party
that people have to sign an NDA?
Nothing bad.
It's just a way to create
safe space for powerful
and, you know, famous people to relax,
expanding the mind
to break old paradigms.
And by expanding the mind, you mean
taking ketamine, mushrooms?
We're Homicide detectives, okay?
We're not here to bust you
for recreational drug use.
Yeah.
Everyone parties.
And at some point, Evan got worried
supplies were running low,
so he left for a re-up.
But he never came back.
Then someone looked down and saw
the police cars on the street.
Everyone freaked out.
So we left out the back exit
of the building.
Well, the point is,
my client and his wife
were in the VenZip offices
on the 27th floor
when Evan Marks was shot.
No, the point is, Counselor,
your client has to prove it.
[UPBEAT DANCE MUSIC PLAYING]
♪
The planet is gonna run
out of water, like, soon.
That's something
everyone needs to survive.
Whoever figures that out
is gonna make a lot of money.
- And change the world.
- And change the world.
That's the video
Craig Walsh shot at the party.
People are higher than
the Chrysler Building in that thing.
Maybe so, but the time stamp proves
that they were at the party
when Marks was shot.
So if Marks was killed over a
woman, it wasn't Lacy Stevens.
Doesn't look like it.
Yeah, but those Lifestyle
parties are basically just
orgies for tech nerds, right?
Odds are Lacy wasn't the only one
he was romantically involved with.
- [KNOCKING]
- Hey.
I scrubbed through
Marks's phone and email
like you asked, looking for
other possible girlfriends,
and I might have something.
I found several references
to a woman named Eva,
messages that he sent to friends saying
he couldn't wait
to introduce them to her.
- You get a last name?
- Negative.
And I also couldn't find
any Eva in his contact lists.
What's the over/under
this Eva also has a husband?
You know, Craig Walsh
did eventually give up
the contact info for the woman
who runs the invite list
for those Lifestyle parties.
Let's go talk to her.
If she made up the guest list,
maybe she knows who Eva is.
Never heard of her.
But you're the one who puts
these parties together, right?
I'm not a party promoter.
I'm a psychedelic doula.
And that entails what, exactly?
I curate bespoke experiences
for high-end clients
interested in exploring
the psychological
and intellectual benefits
of psychotropic substances.
You do realize that those substances
are against the law?
I neither provide nor partake myself.
Everything I do is perfectly legal.
Clients come to me, and I
coordinate groups whose auras
are a good match and make
arrangements for them
to exchange energies and ideas.
This aura matching, it never
involved a woman named Eva?
No.
What about any men
that might have had an issue
with Marks's relationships
with other women?
Evan did mention that earlier that day
he'd gotten into a big fight with James,
his business partner.
- You mean James Sawyer?
- Yeah.
Evan said the fight was intense.
Apparently, James was so upset
he punched a hole in the wall.
Did Evan ever tell you
what the fight was about?
No, but I do know that James does not
approve of the Lifestyle.
He's very uptight
much more the type to be
territorial over a woman.
I'm sorry, Mr. Sawyer,
but your plane's been grounded,
and I'm being told to wait.
I wanna talk to your manager.
You can talk to us.
Hi. Detective Riley.
This is Detective Shaw.
We tried stopping by your office,
and your assistant told us were making
a little unexpected trip.
Did you ground my plane?
It seems like you're in a rush.
- Where you headed?
- Why does that matter?
Let's go have
a little talk over here, okay?
Word on the street is
that you and Evan Marks
had quite the fight last night.
We had an argument.
It's not uncommon.
We're both passionate people.
You guys argue about a woman?
A woman? No.
If word got out that
the C-suite is throwing
drug-fueled sex parties at corporate HQ,
it's gonna be a problem.
Marks didn't agree?
Evan didn't care that his
Burning Man nonsense
doesn't exactly fly with investors.
But if you think I had anything to do
with what happened, you're crazy.
Evan wasn't just my business partner.
He was my best friend.
If you had nothing to do
with his murder, why skip town?
I'm not skipping town.
I'm flying to San Francisco
to meet with a crisis PR team.
Evan's death sent the
company's stock into a spiral.
I'm gonna go mitigate the fallout.
All right, where were you last night?
D.C. Flew back this morning.
Look, Evan was like a brother to me,
which meant sometimes
we fought like brothers too.
You guys ever fight over Eva?
Eva?
No, that was completely
under Evan's purview.
I didn't really get involved.
What does Eva have to do
with any of this?
You tell us.
We don't even know who she is.
Eva isn't a woman.
She's a software program,
specifically artificial intelligence.
She's the most advanced AI
ever achieved.
♪
Allow me to introduce you to EVA,
short for Electronic Virtual Assistant.
She's artificial intelligence on a level
no one's ever seen before.
You and Evan Marks
ever have any disagreements
about her or it?
Research shows that people prefer
giving artificial intelligence
a female name and pronouns.
Makes it less creepy.
You still didn't answer my question.
No, I didn't have any problems with Evan
wanting to implement EVA.
Honestly, I think it's exciting.
But it was controversial.
There are definitely people
who felt differently.
What was Evan Marks doing
that was so controversial?
As the name implies,
EVA was initially designed
to assist our engineers and programmers.
But she's self-learning.
And within months,
she advanced exponentially
beyond her initial capabilities.
The program is self-iterative,
and its processes operate
in a kind of black box.
There's no real way for us
to track what algorithms
she's using to evolve.
Not my area of expertise, but
doesn't that seem concerning?
Hence the controversy.
Aren't there regulations in place
- around this kind of thing?
- Not really.
Evan was a big proponent of seeing
how far EVA could go on her own.
The goal is for her to assist
the engineers and programmers,
but she can actually do their jobs.
Except faster.
And for free.
That must have pissed off
a lot of employees.
Yeah, about 200 of them.
[ELEVATOR DINGS]
Last week, Evan Marks fired over half
of his company's engineers
and replaced them
with the EVA AI system.
So you're saying that when our witness
overheard Marks's killer say,
"You're turning her against me,"
he was talking about a computer program?
That's what we're thinking.
And according to Kevin Wu,
the operations manager,
Marks was ruthless about
the layoffs, right?
He kicked out 200 employees
on their asses
just like that without warning.
According to him, the future
left these people behind.
All that mind expanding he had done
led him to innovating
beyond human empathy.
That's a lot of suspects
to sort through.
It is.
However, we can
put one of those suspects
at the crime scene.
So Wu gave us all the data he had
on all the fired employees,
and it turns out,
the former chief programmer Ben Stafford
used his key card at the VenZip offices
the night Marks was murdered.
We checked with our
psychedelic doula friend too.
She confirmed he definitely was not
on the list for the
Lifestyle party that night.
I can do you one better.
Listen to this.
Stafford posted this on his social media
the day before the murder.
"Evan Marks will be
the downfall of humanity
"as we know it.
He's a plague that needs to be
eradicated immediately."
That's enough for a search warrant.
Why don't you see what you can turn up?
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
No, no, no, don't touch that.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Back up. All right?
Just stay where you are.
This is insane.
I was just blowing off steam.
I wasn't saying I was
actually gonna kill him.
Then what were you doing
at the VenZip offices
the night of the murder?
I I don't know what
you're talking about.
- Right.
- Detectives?
We found this in the dumpster
behind the building.
- 9 millimeter.
- Yep.
That means we're gonna finish
this little conversation
of ours downtown, okay?
Let's go.
Ballistic tests prove
that the gun that we found
was the one used to kill Marks,
the guy who had just fired you.
We know you were there.
Just tell us what happened.
Any chance I could get
some of my medication?
Medication?
You mean the, uh,
the Adderall that we found when
we searched your apartment?
You're gonna have to produce
a doctor's prescription,
because the bottle that we found
had no pharmacist label on it.
I don't have a prescription.
Then you don't get the Adderall.
It helps me think straight.
How about this?
I'm happy to get you an aspirin,
but until you start
telling us the truth,
it's the best I can do.
Ben, come on.
I'm looking at you, and I can tell
that this is not easy to keep
this all bottled up inside.
[APPREHENSIVE MUSIC]
You're not a bad guy, are you?
♪
I brought the gun to scare him.
I just wanted him to give
everyone their jobs back.
Guy like that,
he wouldn't listen, would he?
No.
The only people he cares about
are his rich friends.
Because of him, hundreds of people
aren't gonna be able
to support their families.
Meanwhile, he's just up in
his office, throwing a party.
He wouldn't even have a company
if it wasn't for the work we all did.
Okay, good.
So, you had an argument.
Uh
I was so angry.
It just wasn't fair.
♪
Next thing I knew
I followed him to the ATM, and I
I shot him.
Okay.
I'm so sorry.
I didn't mean to.
- [KNOCK AT DOOR]
- Come in.
Don't say another word.
I'm Mr. Stafford's attorney.
This interview is over.
Ben Stafford, you are under arrest
for the murder of Evan Marks.
You have the right to remain silent
and refuse to answer questions,
do you understand?
People v. Benjamin Stafford,
charging murder in the second degree.
How does the defendant plea?
Not guilty, Your Honor.
Tyrone, I'll hear you on bail.
Your Honor, Ben Stafford
shot and killed Evan Marks
as retribution for Marks firing him.
We cannot only place the
defendant near the crime scene
around the time of the murder
and tie the murder weapon to him,
but Stafford himself
confessed to detectives.
Stafford lacks deep ties
to the community
and is facing a potential
25-year sentence,
making him a serious flight risk.
We ask for remand.
Police coerced a false confession
from an innocent man
under extreme duress,
an innocent man with no
criminal history, I might add.
We are confident that Mr. Stafford
will be fully exonerated
and ask that he be released
on his own recognizance.
Bail set at 1 million.
[GAVEL BANGS] Next case.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
The jury is never gonna hear
that confession.
Look, how about this?
I'm happy to get you an aspirin,
but until you start
telling us the truth,
that's the best I can do.
Ben Stafford developed
a physical dependency
on Adderall as a result
of the grueling hours
and high performance expectations
of his job at VenZip.
During the interrogation, he
was suffering from withdrawal.
He made multiple requests for the drug.
In the course of an interrogation,
the suspect requested
an illegally procured
controlled substance and
detectives, following protocol,
denied the request.
Police capitalized on my
client's compromised state
by dangling a promise
of access to the pills
in exchange for a confession.
He would have confessed
to anything in that moment
if it meant he'd get a fix,
and Detective Riley knew it.
Riley made no such promise.
"Until you tell us the truth,
that's the best I can do."
It was heavily implied.
That is a wild distortion
of Detective Riley's words.
I understand that the detective may not
have intended to imply a quid pro quo,
but there's sufficient evidence
to support the argument
that the defendant
in his altered state
interpreted it as such,
making the confession
involuntarily coerced
and inherently unreliable.
- Your Honor
- The confession is out.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
So you have a defendant
who confessed to the crime,
but the jury doesn't get to know that.
Can we get a conviction
without the confession?
I think so.
Stafford's key card puts him
at the VenZip offices
right after midnight
on the night of the murder.
Marks was shot right
outside the building.
And Stafford had already
cleared out his office
the week before.
They're gonna have trouble coming up
with a viable explanation
for him being there
other than confronting Marks,
especially at that hour.
Plus, the murder weapon was
recovered in his dumpster,
and you add to that
the clear-cut motive.
Yes, I still think we can win.
Just be careful.
The motive, in this case,
has the potential
to hurt as much as help.
Fear of losing one's livelihood
to AI is pervasive these days.
All I'm saying, Nolan, is,
it's gonna be easier
to sympathize with the defendant
than the billionaire who
fired hundreds of employees.
Humanize the victim, and remind them
Ben Stafford is the villain
in this story.
♪
Mr. Sawyer, you were present
when Evan Marks notified
the defendant that the company
was letting him go,
- is that correct?
- I was.
As co-founders, Evan and I
took our responsibilities
to our employees very seriously.
We wanted to deliver the news
as humanely as possible.
And how did the defendant react?
He was furious.
He threw a fit,
screaming, making threats.
It was a lot to take given that
it was his fault that
it was happening in the first place.
How so?
He was the one who created EVA.
That's the artificial
intelligence program
that the company is now using?
Yes, we discovered that
he had essentially
designed the software
to do his job for him.
He thought he was clever,
that he could just sit around
and do nothing while
collecting a big fat paycheck.
The defendant wasn't the only employee
that you and Marks replaced with EVA.
Unfortunately, the software did
make a number of jobs
at the company redundant,
and we struggled
with what to do with that,
Evan more than me, even.
But ultimately, he felt
we had a responsibility
to push the boundaries
of science and technology
that through innovation,
some sort of utopia
could be reached.
When you say that the defendant
made threats to Marks,
what did he say, exactly?
He got right up in Evan's face
and said he was gonna pay
for what he'd done.
Thank you.
No further questions.
Mr. Sawyer, how would you characterize
your relationship with Evan Marks?
He was my best friend.
And on the business side,
things between you two were good?
We had the perfect complement
of skill sets.
Evan excelled at the big picture stuff,
while I'm good at executing.
Mr. Sawyer, do you
recognize these emails?
It looks like
correspondences between myself
and some of our company board members.
Objection, relevance.
These emails establish that
Mr. Sawyer is not being honest
with the court
about the state of affairs
between him and Evan Marks.
Overruled.
What was the nature of these exchanges?
I reached out to some
of our board members
to see if I could rely on their support.
Because Evan Marks was trying
to push you out of the company?
Yes.
He'd discussed that with a few people.
He felt like you were holding him back,
squelching his creative genius,
isn't that correct?
We were in the process
of sorting it all out.
What did you discover in your
communication with the board?
That I
[TENSE MUSIC]
I didn't have the support I'd imagined.
Meaning Marks could effectively
fire you at any time?
Yes.
But now that he's dead,
you've been appointed sole CEO, correct?
If you're trying to imply
that I'm the one who killed Evan,
you're wasting your time.
I was in D.C. the night he was shot.
That doesn't mean you
couldn't pay somebody
- to do your dirty work.
- Objection, Your Honor.
The defense is trying to suggest
She's not suggesting, she's asserting.
James Sawyer killed Evan Marks.
- Objection.
- Sustained.
Please disregard
defense counsel's statement.
♪
You hung me out to dry up there.
I had no way of knowing
they were coming for you.
Because you didn't tell us
what was really going on.
How did the defense know
about Marks's power grab?
Great question.
I have no idea.
Those were all company emails.
Do you think Stafford
hacked your server?
For all I know,
he had EVA do it for him.
They're trying to make it
look like I killed Evan.
That's insane.
He's gonna get away with murder.
♪
Tell Detective Riley
we're calling him first thing tomorrow.
We need to refocus the jury.
Remind them who the real killer is.
Like it or not, Nolan,
the defense just offered up
a perfectly plausible
alternative suspect.
Detective Riley, in the
course of your investigation,
you discovered that the defendant
had been present at the VenZip offices
the night Evan Marks
was murdered, is that correct?
Yes, he entered the building
at 12:14 a.m.
And Evan Marks was shot
right outside of there
not long after that.
Which is why the defendant immediately
became a person of interest.
We then uncovered a series of threats
that he had made against Marks,
so we executed
a search warrant of his apartment.
And what did you find?
We found a 9-millimeter pistol
in the dumpster behind his building.
Is this the gun that you found?
That's the one.
And did you run
ballistic tests on this gun?
We did.
They confirmed that it was, in fact,
the weapon used to kill Marks.
Thank you.
No further questions.
[TENSE MUSIC]
♪
Is there any evidence
other than the keycard data
that my client was
in the office that night?
For example, security video?
No, Evan Marks had turned off
the security cameras that night.
So that there would be no evidence
of his illicit sex party
filled with illegal drugs?
Objection, calls for speculation.
Sustained.
Were Ben Stafford's fingerprints
on the gun that you found?
No, it had been wiped clean.
No further questions.
Detective, was the dumpster
where you recovered the gun
accessible to just anyone?
It was not.
It was behind a locked gate.
Well, who had a key to that gate?
Only the tenants.
Do any of the tenants
other than Ben Stafford
have any ties to Evan Marks?
None that we could ascertain.
Thank you.
The prosecution rests.
You may call your first
witness, Ms. Greenough.
Your Honor, the defense calls
Ben Stafford to the stand.
I had nothing to do
with what happened to Evan.
Then how do you explain
all of the evidence
that the prosecution has laid out?
I'M being set up by James Sawyer again.
What do you mean again?
Well, about six months ago,
James and Evan called me into a meeting.
They were frustrated that the company's
engineers and programmers
weren't working fast enough.
It was absurd.
Everyone was working 16 hours
a day, seven days a week.
I had to take Adderall just to keep up.
What did they wanna discuss?
They wanted me to create an AI program
to carry some of the workload,
make things go faster.
And what did you say?
I had real reservations about the idea.
There were obvious ethical implications,
but also, I didn't
want to be responsible
for putting my coworkers' jobs
in jeopardy.
But James and Evan made clear
they'd fire me if I didn't do it.
So you did what they demanded.
And they ended up firing me anyway.
And then when they fired everyone else,
they told them that it was my fault,
that I created EVA on my own
so I didn't have to work.
- They made you the fall guy.
- Exactly.
And now James Sawyer is doing it again.
I was at home,
asleep in my bed that night.
I've never fired a gun in my life.
But your key card
Easiest thing in the world to clone.
My ten-year-old niece could do it.
Well, what about the gun?
It was found behind
your apartment building.
James has access to my personnel files.
He knows where I live.
But according to the detective,
you need a key to access the dumpster.
Half the time nobody
remembers to lock that gate,
and even if it's locked,
it's not hard to bypass.
I swear, I'm being set up here.
I'm innocent.
No further questions.
[TENSE MUSIC]
♪
So
[CLEARS THROAT]
By your own admission,
you had plenty of reason
to want Evan Marks dead.
He fired you and made you
the fall guy for all the other layoffs.
And, in fact, you made
multiple threats against him,
both online and in person,
isn't that true?
Which is how James knew
I'd be the perfect patsy.
So we're to believe that James Sawyer,
one of the most respected
and accomplished businessmen
of our time,
somehow arranged the murder
of his closest friend
and business partner
and then created some
elaborate scheme to frame you?
That's who these people are.
Evan Marks and James Sawyer,
they're all monsters.
They use honest,
hard-working people as pawns.
I'm just one more meaningless no one
easily sacrificed so that James Sawyer
can gain more power and more profit.
And the thing is, guys like him,
they always get away with it too.
♪
That was a hell of a performance.
If I hadn't seen Stafford's
confession with my own eyes
I know.
- Good, caught you.
- What's going on?
There's something I need you to see.
Is there an office we can go to?
Our offices were in the process
of upgrading our security system
right before Evan was murdered.
So I took a look at one
of the new cameras
on the exterior of the building.
There's a direct shot of the
ATM where Evan was murdered.
How the hell did police miss
that in their initial canvass?
Camera's so tiny, you can't even see it
unless you to look for it.
But it was operational that night
even though it wasn't on the mainframe,
meaning that it wasn't
logged into the system.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
♪
That's Ben Stafford, clear as day.
Oh, my God.
We got him.
Hey. You're in early.
Yeah, I couldn't sleep.
Something was bugging me.
Look at this.
What am I missing?
Well, this entire trial,
Stafford has been taking
meticulous notes
as people testify, you noticed?
Yeah.
Just figured he was
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
Oh.
Stafford is left-handed.
But the shooter in this video
is using his right hand.
So what, you're worried
the video isn't real?
The defense blaming
James Sawyer for Marks's murder
is the top headline in news
outlets across the country.
What are the chances
that Sawyer just happens
to be the one to find
the perfect piece of evidence,
evidence that nails Stafford
and clears his name?
I get what you're saying.
He is the CEO.
They got all kinds of security cameras.
But he didn't find
the video until yesterday?
I know the timing is convenient,
but it doesn't prove anything.
No.
But given Sawyer's access
to advanced technology,
a deepfake video of this caliber
isn't outside the realm of possibility.
So what do you wanna do?
I am going to ask for a continuance
while you get clarity
on the video's authenticity.
ITB used every tool they
have to analyze this thing,
but the results were inconclusive.
So they can't tell if it's real or fake.
I mean, the biggest giveaway
would be here.
For whatever reason,
even the most advanced AI
still struggles to render human
hands and fingers correctly.
But from this far away
and at this resolution,
it's impossible to zoom in enough
to see Stafford's hands in detail.
That could be by design
to avoid detection.
It could be.
It could also just be a coincidence
that the camera is that far away.
Yeah, well, the problem is,
the coincidences
are really piling up here.
If this is a deepfake, it is one
of the best ones I've seen.
But we just can't say conclusively
one way or the other.
[KNOCKS]
Hey.
So, um, Riley and Shaw went back out
to the VenZip offices.
They confirmed that there is, in fact,
a camera on the exterior
of the building facing the ATM.
Is there any way to verify
how long that camera
has actually been there?
There is documentation
alleging when it was installed,
but that would be easier to manufacture
than a video, so
- So no.
- Correct.
Which means we don't actually
know that it's false.
We don't know that it's real, either.
If we don't present
the video, can we win?
I'm not sure.
It's a circumstantial case
with an unlikable victim.
And a likable defendant
who acts like he's the victim.
If the defense wants
to challenge the video,
they can call an expert and debunk it.
Jack, we don't know
if it's actually real.
It's up to the judge.
He can deny its admission,
or he can leave it up to the jury.
But by presenting it,
we're vouching for it.
We are telling the jury
we believe it's real.
I know Stafford is guilty.
He confessed, for God's sake,
but if we don't start drawing
the line between what's real
and what's not,
we'll be contributing to the
very problem that could
hell, if every deepfake video
is admissible,
we'll never get another conviction.
All the defense has to do is
show some perfectly credible
video that disproves our case.
We have a duty here.
Our duty is to the truth,
and the truth, in this case,
is that Ben Stafford
murdered Evan Marks.
[APPREHENSIVE MUSIC]
Use the video.
End of the day, it's up to the jury
to determine what the truth is.
♪
That's that's not me.
That's no, I don't
Sorry, you're you're saying
that's not you in the video?
Right there.
No, I can see it's me.
It must be a deepfake.
So it is you, but what,
it's the video that's not real?
First off, I'm left-handed.
But your right hand is functional.
You can certainly shoot
with that hand as well.
Maybe, but I don't, and I didn't.
So this video that we are
all looking at with our eyes,
you're saying, well, that's not real.
Objection, asked and answered.
Sustained.
You're trying to make it sound crazy,
but with AI these days,
you can make something like this.
You don't even need
to doctor existing video.
You could just make it whole cloth.
So you'd have us believe
that your key card was cloned,
that the murder weapon was planted,
and now actual security footage
was created from thin air
using technology more advanced
than anyone here has ever seen,
all to frame you when the simpler,
the more obvious answer is
that you murdered Evan Marks.
[TENSE MUSIC]
Please, you have to believe me.
Mr. Stafford, why should we believe you
over what we can see with our own eyes?
♪
Mr. Foreperson, has the jury
reached a verdict?
We have, Your Honor.
In the charge of murder
in the second degree,
we find the defendant,
Benjamin Stafford, guilty.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,
thank you for your service.
[GAVEL BANGS]
♪
It was the right verdict,
put away a guilty man.
Yeah.
But what happens the next time
or the time after that?
This job was hard enough
when we knew the difference
between real and fake.
But now?
♪
In the criminal justice system,
the people are represented
by two separate,
yet equally important groups:
the police, who investigate crime,
and the district attorneys,
who prosecute the offenders.
These are their stories.
Okay, stress me on checkers or chess ♪
I don't play by the rules
if you guessed it ♪
We about to run it up, run it up ♪
We about to run it up,
run it up, run ♪
We about to run it up, run it up ♪
[ENGINE REVVING] [ALARM BLARING]
[TENSE MUSIC]
♪
[GUN CLICKS]
[SIREN WAILING]
Hell of a way to start your day, huh?
Yeah, I'm not sure it's
actually started yet.
Not a morning person?
Oh, I love a morning.
4:00 a.m.? Still last night.
What are we looking at?
Oh, DOA, took one in the chest.
No wallet, no phone.
Bodega owner down the street
heard the shot around 2:00 a.m.
and called it in
but didn't see anything.
Okay.
Pricey clothes.
Bet he had an expensive watch too.
Yeah.
Could be looking at
an old-fashioned robbery.
- Maybe.
- Detectives.
We found this in the bushes over there.
- Thank you.
- Empty.
So the killer took the cash,
tossed the wallet.
Evan Marks.
- The tech guy.
- CEO of VenZip?
Damn, VenZip is how I pay
for everything these days.
- You don't use it?
- No, man.
I'm not trusting my bank info to an app.
[LAUGHS]
Okay, so the headquarters
is across the street.
He's at the office late.
The guy's a billionaire,
bragging about the fact
that he's about to single-
handedly make cash obsolete.
So what's a guy like that
doing at an ATM
at 2:00 in the morning?
[DRAMATIC MUSIC]
♪
Bank records confirm Evan Marks
made a withdrawal from the ATM
just before the shooting.
Thanks.
2 grand, maximum amount allowed.
That's a lot of money
for that hour of night.
Mm.
We're agreeing to call it night now.
Hey, does anyone know
who James Sawyer is?
Yeah, he's like a god in the tech world.
Well, apparently,
he is also a co-founder
of our vic's company.
Evan Marks and James Sawyer
are like the dream team
of Silicon Valley
or at least they were.
Well, Sawyer just posted this
on his social media.
"Evan Marks was one
of the greatest minds
"of our generation.
The NYPD should be ashamed.
"Violent street crime is out of control,
and Evan's blood is on their hands."
So Marks's murder
is somehow our fault now?
Well, apparently, according
to James Sawyer, it is.
And that guy has got
millions of followers
that worship him as a genius.
And every one of them
is reposting this nonsense.
Look, we gotta wrap this up.
What do we got?
We tried pinging Marks's stolen phone,
but we didn't get anything.
Killer likely turned it off.
Still canvassing for video,
but so far, nothing.
But he still slipped up.
Techs were able to lift a partial print
from Marks's wallet, and I got a hit.
Blake Hughes, also known as G-Ticket.
- G-Ticket?
- He's a rapper.
And it actually looks like he's
pretty popular on SoundCloud.
But what is of interest
is his list of priors
possession with intent to sell,
aggravated assault,
robbery in the first degree.
Go, go.
[HIP-HOP MUSIC PLAYING INDISTINCTLY]
♪
That part was fire.
Yo, yo, yo. What's going on?
Can I help you?
Yeah, NYPD, my guy.
We need to talk
to your friend right there.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
- Come on. Let's go.
- Oh, come on.
- Hey!
- Yo!
♪
[GROANS]
Get off me!
- I ain't done nothing.
- Yeah?
Well, we both know that's not true.
Just stop, all right? Stop.
Stop.
Give me your arm. Give me your arm.
Well, this looks like 2,000 bucks.
Blake Hughes, you're under arrest.
We know it was you.
Your cell phone data puts you
in the Meatpacking District
last night, right around the area
Marks was murdered.
We got your fingerprints on his wallet.
We caught you with his
phone and his watch.
Nah, man, that ain't it.
Look, I was there, but
I knew the guy. We were friends.
Oh, you and Evan Marks were friends.
I gotta hear this one.
We met last year at Coachella.
He was a fan of my music.
All right, so what were you doing
outside his place of business
at 2:00 a.m. last night?
He asked me to come meet him.
He he would buy off of me sometimes.
Dude love to party.
I mean, party.
Like, he wanted ketamine, acid, shrooms.
Okay, so you were there
to sell him drugs.
Just so we're clear,
I'm out of that game.
- [LAUGHS]
- Clearly.
I would make an exception for Evan.
That stuff you found,
I mean, I only had it
because I wanted to stay
on his good side, you know?
Look, I was hoping
he'd give me money to
to produce my album.
Okay, so just help me out.
What went wrong? Why did you shoot him?
I didn't.
When I got there, he was already
arguing with some other guy.
So I didn't wanna get involved.
I hung back, stayed out of sight.
They started yelling at each other.
Next thing I knew, there was a gunshot,
and the other dude ran off.
And how did you end up with
Marks's money and his watch?
After the guy ran away,
I went to go check on Evan,
see if he was okay.
But he was already dead.
So you're telling me
you robbed your dead friend?
Look, I'm not proud of it,
but studio time is expensive.
All right, in any event,
you didn't happen to get a good look
at this other guy, did you?
No, but I did overhear
some of their conversation.
Their argument, they were
They were fighting over a woman.
What makes you say that?
The dude said,
"You turned her against me,"
or something like that.
And Marks was all,
"She doesn't need you anymore."
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
♪
We found some pretty raunchy texts
between you and Evan Marks.
What was the nature of
your relationship with him?
Oh, God.
I've known Evan forever.
We first met in Aspen, I think.
Were you two romantically involved?
You mean, were we sleeping together?
Yeah, sometimes.
But we weren't dating or anything.
It was just two friends exploring,
finding joy together.
You know anybody who might
have been jealous of this joy?
Jealous of me and Evan
sleeping together?
No.
Hey, Lace.
I have to be at the gallery till 3:00,
so I picked us up some lunch.
Afternoon.
What's going on?
Detective Riley.
This is Detective Shaw.
And you are?
Craig Walsh.
Is this about Evan?
It is.
How well do you know him?
Mm, well.
He officiated our wedding.
- You guys are married?
- Yeah.
Mr. Walsh, where were you
last night around 2:00 a.m.?
[SCOFFS]
I want a lawyer.
Magic word, okay.
Call him to the precinct.
♪
Spoke to your doorman.
According to him, you and your wife
didn't get home last night
until after 4:00 a.m.
Which does not look good since Marks
was killed around 2:00.
I would never kill Evan.
I loved the guy.
Bet you didn't love him
sleeping with your wife, though, huh?
Lacy and I have an open marriage.
Okay.
Then where were you last night?
It'll be fine.
Just tell them.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
I was at the VenZip offices.
So was Lacy.
So you were with him Evan Marks.
And a lot of other people.
There was a party.
Oh, yeah?
What kind of party was that?
There's an underground scene for people
of a certain caliber.
It's called the Lifestyle.
- Lifestyle?
- I did not name it.
Evan was super into the whole thing.
It was his idea to throw one
of the parties at his office.
You know, you really didn't
need a lawyer to tell us this.
We're talking about
an invite-only situation here.
And people that attend
these things are big time.
Guests have to sign
a non-disclosure agreement.
I wanted to make sure
I wouldn't get in trouble.
And what kind of things
are going on at this party
that people have to sign an NDA?
Nothing bad.
It's just a way to create
safe space for powerful
and, you know, famous people to relax,
expanding the mind
to break old paradigms.
And by expanding the mind, you mean
taking ketamine, mushrooms?
We're Homicide detectives, okay?
We're not here to bust you
for recreational drug use.
Yeah.
Everyone parties.
And at some point, Evan got worried
supplies were running low,
so he left for a re-up.
But he never came back.
Then someone looked down and saw
the police cars on the street.
Everyone freaked out.
So we left out the back exit
of the building.
Well, the point is,
my client and his wife
were in the VenZip offices
on the 27th floor
when Evan Marks was shot.
No, the point is, Counselor,
your client has to prove it.
[UPBEAT DANCE MUSIC PLAYING]
♪
The planet is gonna run
out of water, like, soon.
That's something
everyone needs to survive.
Whoever figures that out
is gonna make a lot of money.
- And change the world.
- And change the world.
That's the video
Craig Walsh shot at the party.
People are higher than
the Chrysler Building in that thing.
Maybe so, but the time stamp proves
that they were at the party
when Marks was shot.
So if Marks was killed over a
woman, it wasn't Lacy Stevens.
Doesn't look like it.
Yeah, but those Lifestyle
parties are basically just
orgies for tech nerds, right?
Odds are Lacy wasn't the only one
he was romantically involved with.
- [KNOCKING]
- Hey.
I scrubbed through
Marks's phone and email
like you asked, looking for
other possible girlfriends,
and I might have something.
I found several references
to a woman named Eva,
messages that he sent to friends saying
he couldn't wait
to introduce them to her.
- You get a last name?
- Negative.
And I also couldn't find
any Eva in his contact lists.
What's the over/under
this Eva also has a husband?
You know, Craig Walsh
did eventually give up
the contact info for the woman
who runs the invite list
for those Lifestyle parties.
Let's go talk to her.
If she made up the guest list,
maybe she knows who Eva is.
Never heard of her.
But you're the one who puts
these parties together, right?
I'm not a party promoter.
I'm a psychedelic doula.
And that entails what, exactly?
I curate bespoke experiences
for high-end clients
interested in exploring
the psychological
and intellectual benefits
of psychotropic substances.
You do realize that those substances
are against the law?
I neither provide nor partake myself.
Everything I do is perfectly legal.
Clients come to me, and I
coordinate groups whose auras
are a good match and make
arrangements for them
to exchange energies and ideas.
This aura matching, it never
involved a woman named Eva?
No.
What about any men
that might have had an issue
with Marks's relationships
with other women?
Evan did mention that earlier that day
he'd gotten into a big fight with James,
his business partner.
- You mean James Sawyer?
- Yeah.
Evan said the fight was intense.
Apparently, James was so upset
he punched a hole in the wall.
Did Evan ever tell you
what the fight was about?
No, but I do know that James does not
approve of the Lifestyle.
He's very uptight
much more the type to be
territorial over a woman.
I'm sorry, Mr. Sawyer,
but your plane's been grounded,
and I'm being told to wait.
I wanna talk to your manager.
You can talk to us.
Hi. Detective Riley.
This is Detective Shaw.
We tried stopping by your office,
and your assistant told us were making
a little unexpected trip.
Did you ground my plane?
It seems like you're in a rush.
- Where you headed?
- Why does that matter?
Let's go have
a little talk over here, okay?
Word on the street is
that you and Evan Marks
had quite the fight last night.
We had an argument.
It's not uncommon.
We're both passionate people.
You guys argue about a woman?
A woman? No.
If word got out that
the C-suite is throwing
drug-fueled sex parties at corporate HQ,
it's gonna be a problem.
Marks didn't agree?
Evan didn't care that his
Burning Man nonsense
doesn't exactly fly with investors.
But if you think I had anything to do
with what happened, you're crazy.
Evan wasn't just my business partner.
He was my best friend.
If you had nothing to do
with his murder, why skip town?
I'm not skipping town.
I'm flying to San Francisco
to meet with a crisis PR team.
Evan's death sent the
company's stock into a spiral.
I'm gonna go mitigate the fallout.
All right, where were you last night?
D.C. Flew back this morning.
Look, Evan was like a brother to me,
which meant sometimes
we fought like brothers too.
You guys ever fight over Eva?
Eva?
No, that was completely
under Evan's purview.
I didn't really get involved.
What does Eva have to do
with any of this?
You tell us.
We don't even know who she is.
Eva isn't a woman.
She's a software program,
specifically artificial intelligence.
She's the most advanced AI
ever achieved.
♪
Allow me to introduce you to EVA,
short for Electronic Virtual Assistant.
She's artificial intelligence on a level
no one's ever seen before.
You and Evan Marks
ever have any disagreements
about her or it?
Research shows that people prefer
giving artificial intelligence
a female name and pronouns.
Makes it less creepy.
You still didn't answer my question.
No, I didn't have any problems with Evan
wanting to implement EVA.
Honestly, I think it's exciting.
But it was controversial.
There are definitely people
who felt differently.
What was Evan Marks doing
that was so controversial?
As the name implies,
EVA was initially designed
to assist our engineers and programmers.
But she's self-learning.
And within months,
she advanced exponentially
beyond her initial capabilities.
The program is self-iterative,
and its processes operate
in a kind of black box.
There's no real way for us
to track what algorithms
she's using to evolve.
Not my area of expertise, but
doesn't that seem concerning?
Hence the controversy.
Aren't there regulations in place
- around this kind of thing?
- Not really.
Evan was a big proponent of seeing
how far EVA could go on her own.
The goal is for her to assist
the engineers and programmers,
but she can actually do their jobs.
Except faster.
And for free.
That must have pissed off
a lot of employees.
Yeah, about 200 of them.
[ELEVATOR DINGS]
Last week, Evan Marks fired over half
of his company's engineers
and replaced them
with the EVA AI system.
So you're saying that when our witness
overheard Marks's killer say,
"You're turning her against me,"
he was talking about a computer program?
That's what we're thinking.
And according to Kevin Wu,
the operations manager,
Marks was ruthless about
the layoffs, right?
He kicked out 200 employees
on their asses
just like that without warning.
According to him, the future
left these people behind.
All that mind expanding he had done
led him to innovating
beyond human empathy.
That's a lot of suspects
to sort through.
It is.
However, we can
put one of those suspects
at the crime scene.
So Wu gave us all the data he had
on all the fired employees,
and it turns out,
the former chief programmer Ben Stafford
used his key card at the VenZip offices
the night Marks was murdered.
We checked with our
psychedelic doula friend too.
She confirmed he definitely was not
on the list for the
Lifestyle party that night.
I can do you one better.
Listen to this.
Stafford posted this on his social media
the day before the murder.
"Evan Marks will be
the downfall of humanity
"as we know it.
He's a plague that needs to be
eradicated immediately."
That's enough for a search warrant.
Why don't you see what you can turn up?
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
No, no, no, don't touch that.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Back up. All right?
Just stay where you are.
This is insane.
I was just blowing off steam.
I wasn't saying I was
actually gonna kill him.
Then what were you doing
at the VenZip offices
the night of the murder?
I I don't know what
you're talking about.
- Right.
- Detectives?
We found this in the dumpster
behind the building.
- 9 millimeter.
- Yep.
That means we're gonna finish
this little conversation
of ours downtown, okay?
Let's go.
Ballistic tests prove
that the gun that we found
was the one used to kill Marks,
the guy who had just fired you.
We know you were there.
Just tell us what happened.
Any chance I could get
some of my medication?
Medication?
You mean the, uh,
the Adderall that we found when
we searched your apartment?
You're gonna have to produce
a doctor's prescription,
because the bottle that we found
had no pharmacist label on it.
I don't have a prescription.
Then you don't get the Adderall.
It helps me think straight.
How about this?
I'm happy to get you an aspirin,
but until you start
telling us the truth,
it's the best I can do.
Ben, come on.
I'm looking at you, and I can tell
that this is not easy to keep
this all bottled up inside.
[APPREHENSIVE MUSIC]
You're not a bad guy, are you?
♪
I brought the gun to scare him.
I just wanted him to give
everyone their jobs back.
Guy like that,
he wouldn't listen, would he?
No.
The only people he cares about
are his rich friends.
Because of him, hundreds of people
aren't gonna be able
to support their families.
Meanwhile, he's just up in
his office, throwing a party.
He wouldn't even have a company
if it wasn't for the work we all did.
Okay, good.
So, you had an argument.
Uh
I was so angry.
It just wasn't fair.
♪
Next thing I knew
I followed him to the ATM, and I
I shot him.
Okay.
I'm so sorry.
I didn't mean to.
- [KNOCK AT DOOR]
- Come in.
Don't say another word.
I'm Mr. Stafford's attorney.
This interview is over.
Ben Stafford, you are under arrest
for the murder of Evan Marks.
You have the right to remain silent
and refuse to answer questions,
do you understand?
People v. Benjamin Stafford,
charging murder in the second degree.
How does the defendant plea?
Not guilty, Your Honor.
Tyrone, I'll hear you on bail.
Your Honor, Ben Stafford
shot and killed Evan Marks
as retribution for Marks firing him.
We cannot only place the
defendant near the crime scene
around the time of the murder
and tie the murder weapon to him,
but Stafford himself
confessed to detectives.
Stafford lacks deep ties
to the community
and is facing a potential
25-year sentence,
making him a serious flight risk.
We ask for remand.
Police coerced a false confession
from an innocent man
under extreme duress,
an innocent man with no
criminal history, I might add.
We are confident that Mr. Stafford
will be fully exonerated
and ask that he be released
on his own recognizance.
Bail set at 1 million.
[GAVEL BANGS] Next case.
[INDISTINCT CHATTER]
The jury is never gonna hear
that confession.
Look, how about this?
I'm happy to get you an aspirin,
but until you start
telling us the truth,
that's the best I can do.
Ben Stafford developed
a physical dependency
on Adderall as a result
of the grueling hours
and high performance expectations
of his job at VenZip.
During the interrogation, he
was suffering from withdrawal.
He made multiple requests for the drug.
In the course of an interrogation,
the suspect requested
an illegally procured
controlled substance and
detectives, following protocol,
denied the request.
Police capitalized on my
client's compromised state
by dangling a promise
of access to the pills
in exchange for a confession.
He would have confessed
to anything in that moment
if it meant he'd get a fix,
and Detective Riley knew it.
Riley made no such promise.
"Until you tell us the truth,
that's the best I can do."
It was heavily implied.
That is a wild distortion
of Detective Riley's words.
I understand that the detective may not
have intended to imply a quid pro quo,
but there's sufficient evidence
to support the argument
that the defendant
in his altered state
interpreted it as such,
making the confession
involuntarily coerced
and inherently unreliable.
- Your Honor
- The confession is out.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
So you have a defendant
who confessed to the crime,
but the jury doesn't get to know that.
Can we get a conviction
without the confession?
I think so.
Stafford's key card puts him
at the VenZip offices
right after midnight
on the night of the murder.
Marks was shot right
outside the building.
And Stafford had already
cleared out his office
the week before.
They're gonna have trouble coming up
with a viable explanation
for him being there
other than confronting Marks,
especially at that hour.
Plus, the murder weapon was
recovered in his dumpster,
and you add to that
the clear-cut motive.
Yes, I still think we can win.
Just be careful.
The motive, in this case,
has the potential
to hurt as much as help.
Fear of losing one's livelihood
to AI is pervasive these days.
All I'm saying, Nolan, is,
it's gonna be easier
to sympathize with the defendant
than the billionaire who
fired hundreds of employees.
Humanize the victim, and remind them
Ben Stafford is the villain
in this story.
♪
Mr. Sawyer, you were present
when Evan Marks notified
the defendant that the company
was letting him go,
- is that correct?
- I was.
As co-founders, Evan and I
took our responsibilities
to our employees very seriously.
We wanted to deliver the news
as humanely as possible.
And how did the defendant react?
He was furious.
He threw a fit,
screaming, making threats.
It was a lot to take given that
it was his fault that
it was happening in the first place.
How so?
He was the one who created EVA.
That's the artificial
intelligence program
that the company is now using?
Yes, we discovered that
he had essentially
designed the software
to do his job for him.
He thought he was clever,
that he could just sit around
and do nothing while
collecting a big fat paycheck.
The defendant wasn't the only employee
that you and Marks replaced with EVA.
Unfortunately, the software did
make a number of jobs
at the company redundant,
and we struggled
with what to do with that,
Evan more than me, even.
But ultimately, he felt
we had a responsibility
to push the boundaries
of science and technology
that through innovation,
some sort of utopia
could be reached.
When you say that the defendant
made threats to Marks,
what did he say, exactly?
He got right up in Evan's face
and said he was gonna pay
for what he'd done.
Thank you.
No further questions.
Mr. Sawyer, how would you characterize
your relationship with Evan Marks?
He was my best friend.
And on the business side,
things between you two were good?
We had the perfect complement
of skill sets.
Evan excelled at the big picture stuff,
while I'm good at executing.
Mr. Sawyer, do you
recognize these emails?
It looks like
correspondences between myself
and some of our company board members.
Objection, relevance.
These emails establish that
Mr. Sawyer is not being honest
with the court
about the state of affairs
between him and Evan Marks.
Overruled.
What was the nature of these exchanges?
I reached out to some
of our board members
to see if I could rely on their support.
Because Evan Marks was trying
to push you out of the company?
Yes.
He'd discussed that with a few people.
He felt like you were holding him back,
squelching his creative genius,
isn't that correct?
We were in the process
of sorting it all out.
What did you discover in your
communication with the board?
That I
[TENSE MUSIC]
I didn't have the support I'd imagined.
Meaning Marks could effectively
fire you at any time?
Yes.
But now that he's dead,
you've been appointed sole CEO, correct?
If you're trying to imply
that I'm the one who killed Evan,
you're wasting your time.
I was in D.C. the night he was shot.
That doesn't mean you
couldn't pay somebody
- to do your dirty work.
- Objection, Your Honor.
The defense is trying to suggest
She's not suggesting, she's asserting.
James Sawyer killed Evan Marks.
- Objection.
- Sustained.
Please disregard
defense counsel's statement.
♪
You hung me out to dry up there.
I had no way of knowing
they were coming for you.
Because you didn't tell us
what was really going on.
How did the defense know
about Marks's power grab?
Great question.
I have no idea.
Those were all company emails.
Do you think Stafford
hacked your server?
For all I know,
he had EVA do it for him.
They're trying to make it
look like I killed Evan.
That's insane.
He's gonna get away with murder.
♪
Tell Detective Riley
we're calling him first thing tomorrow.
We need to refocus the jury.
Remind them who the real killer is.
Like it or not, Nolan,
the defense just offered up
a perfectly plausible
alternative suspect.
Detective Riley, in the
course of your investigation,
you discovered that the defendant
had been present at the VenZip offices
the night Evan Marks
was murdered, is that correct?
Yes, he entered the building
at 12:14 a.m.
And Evan Marks was shot
right outside of there
not long after that.
Which is why the defendant immediately
became a person of interest.
We then uncovered a series of threats
that he had made against Marks,
so we executed
a search warrant of his apartment.
And what did you find?
We found a 9-millimeter pistol
in the dumpster behind his building.
Is this the gun that you found?
That's the one.
And did you run
ballistic tests on this gun?
We did.
They confirmed that it was, in fact,
the weapon used to kill Marks.
Thank you.
No further questions.
[TENSE MUSIC]
♪
Is there any evidence
other than the keycard data
that my client was
in the office that night?
For example, security video?
No, Evan Marks had turned off
the security cameras that night.
So that there would be no evidence
of his illicit sex party
filled with illegal drugs?
Objection, calls for speculation.
Sustained.
Were Ben Stafford's fingerprints
on the gun that you found?
No, it had been wiped clean.
No further questions.
Detective, was the dumpster
where you recovered the gun
accessible to just anyone?
It was not.
It was behind a locked gate.
Well, who had a key to that gate?
Only the tenants.
Do any of the tenants
other than Ben Stafford
have any ties to Evan Marks?
None that we could ascertain.
Thank you.
The prosecution rests.
You may call your first
witness, Ms. Greenough.
Your Honor, the defense calls
Ben Stafford to the stand.
I had nothing to do
with what happened to Evan.
Then how do you explain
all of the evidence
that the prosecution has laid out?
I'M being set up by James Sawyer again.
What do you mean again?
Well, about six months ago,
James and Evan called me into a meeting.
They were frustrated that the company's
engineers and programmers
weren't working fast enough.
It was absurd.
Everyone was working 16 hours
a day, seven days a week.
I had to take Adderall just to keep up.
What did they wanna discuss?
They wanted me to create an AI program
to carry some of the workload,
make things go faster.
And what did you say?
I had real reservations about the idea.
There were obvious ethical implications,
but also, I didn't
want to be responsible
for putting my coworkers' jobs
in jeopardy.
But James and Evan made clear
they'd fire me if I didn't do it.
So you did what they demanded.
And they ended up firing me anyway.
And then when they fired everyone else,
they told them that it was my fault,
that I created EVA on my own
so I didn't have to work.
- They made you the fall guy.
- Exactly.
And now James Sawyer is doing it again.
I was at home,
asleep in my bed that night.
I've never fired a gun in my life.
But your key card
Easiest thing in the world to clone.
My ten-year-old niece could do it.
Well, what about the gun?
It was found behind
your apartment building.
James has access to my personnel files.
He knows where I live.
But according to the detective,
you need a key to access the dumpster.
Half the time nobody
remembers to lock that gate,
and even if it's locked,
it's not hard to bypass.
I swear, I'm being set up here.
I'm innocent.
No further questions.
[TENSE MUSIC]
♪
So
[CLEARS THROAT]
By your own admission,
you had plenty of reason
to want Evan Marks dead.
He fired you and made you
the fall guy for all the other layoffs.
And, in fact, you made
multiple threats against him,
both online and in person,
isn't that true?
Which is how James knew
I'd be the perfect patsy.
So we're to believe that James Sawyer,
one of the most respected
and accomplished businessmen
of our time,
somehow arranged the murder
of his closest friend
and business partner
and then created some
elaborate scheme to frame you?
That's who these people are.
Evan Marks and James Sawyer,
they're all monsters.
They use honest,
hard-working people as pawns.
I'm just one more meaningless no one
easily sacrificed so that James Sawyer
can gain more power and more profit.
And the thing is, guys like him,
they always get away with it too.
♪
That was a hell of a performance.
If I hadn't seen Stafford's
confession with my own eyes
I know.
- Good, caught you.
- What's going on?
There's something I need you to see.
Is there an office we can go to?
Our offices were in the process
of upgrading our security system
right before Evan was murdered.
So I took a look at one
of the new cameras
on the exterior of the building.
There's a direct shot of the
ATM where Evan was murdered.
How the hell did police miss
that in their initial canvass?
Camera's so tiny, you can't even see it
unless you to look for it.
But it was operational that night
even though it wasn't on the mainframe,
meaning that it wasn't
logged into the system.
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
♪
That's Ben Stafford, clear as day.
Oh, my God.
We got him.
Hey. You're in early.
Yeah, I couldn't sleep.
Something was bugging me.
Look at this.
What am I missing?
Well, this entire trial,
Stafford has been taking
meticulous notes
as people testify, you noticed?
Yeah.
Just figured he was
[SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC]
Oh.
Stafford is left-handed.
But the shooter in this video
is using his right hand.
So what, you're worried
the video isn't real?
The defense blaming
James Sawyer for Marks's murder
is the top headline in news
outlets across the country.
What are the chances
that Sawyer just happens
to be the one to find
the perfect piece of evidence,
evidence that nails Stafford
and clears his name?
I get what you're saying.
He is the CEO.
They got all kinds of security cameras.
But he didn't find
the video until yesterday?
I know the timing is convenient,
but it doesn't prove anything.
No.
But given Sawyer's access
to advanced technology,
a deepfake video of this caliber
isn't outside the realm of possibility.
So what do you wanna do?
I am going to ask for a continuance
while you get clarity
on the video's authenticity.
ITB used every tool they
have to analyze this thing,
but the results were inconclusive.
So they can't tell if it's real or fake.
I mean, the biggest giveaway
would be here.
For whatever reason,
even the most advanced AI
still struggles to render human
hands and fingers correctly.
But from this far away
and at this resolution,
it's impossible to zoom in enough
to see Stafford's hands in detail.
That could be by design
to avoid detection.
It could be.
It could also just be a coincidence
that the camera is that far away.
Yeah, well, the problem is,
the coincidences
are really piling up here.
If this is a deepfake, it is one
of the best ones I've seen.
But we just can't say conclusively
one way or the other.
[KNOCKS]
Hey.
So, um, Riley and Shaw went back out
to the VenZip offices.
They confirmed that there is, in fact,
a camera on the exterior
of the building facing the ATM.
Is there any way to verify
how long that camera
has actually been there?
There is documentation
alleging when it was installed,
but that would be easier to manufacture
than a video, so
- So no.
- Correct.
Which means we don't actually
know that it's false.
We don't know that it's real, either.
If we don't present
the video, can we win?
I'm not sure.
It's a circumstantial case
with an unlikable victim.
And a likable defendant
who acts like he's the victim.
If the defense wants
to challenge the video,
they can call an expert and debunk it.
Jack, we don't know
if it's actually real.
It's up to the judge.
He can deny its admission,
or he can leave it up to the jury.
But by presenting it,
we're vouching for it.
We are telling the jury
we believe it's real.
I know Stafford is guilty.
He confessed, for God's sake,
but if we don't start drawing
the line between what's real
and what's not,
we'll be contributing to the
very problem that could
hell, if every deepfake video
is admissible,
we'll never get another conviction.
All the defense has to do is
show some perfectly credible
video that disproves our case.
We have a duty here.
Our duty is to the truth,
and the truth, in this case,
is that Ben Stafford
murdered Evan Marks.
[APPREHENSIVE MUSIC]
Use the video.
End of the day, it's up to the jury
to determine what the truth is.
♪
That's that's not me.
That's no, I don't
Sorry, you're you're saying
that's not you in the video?
Right there.
No, I can see it's me.
It must be a deepfake.
So it is you, but what,
it's the video that's not real?
First off, I'm left-handed.
But your right hand is functional.
You can certainly shoot
with that hand as well.
Maybe, but I don't, and I didn't.
So this video that we are
all looking at with our eyes,
you're saying, well, that's not real.
Objection, asked and answered.
Sustained.
You're trying to make it sound crazy,
but with AI these days,
you can make something like this.
You don't even need
to doctor existing video.
You could just make it whole cloth.
So you'd have us believe
that your key card was cloned,
that the murder weapon was planted,
and now actual security footage
was created from thin air
using technology more advanced
than anyone here has ever seen,
all to frame you when the simpler,
the more obvious answer is
that you murdered Evan Marks.
[TENSE MUSIC]
Please, you have to believe me.
Mr. Stafford, why should we believe you
over what we can see with our own eyes?
♪
Mr. Foreperson, has the jury
reached a verdict?
We have, Your Honor.
In the charge of murder
in the second degree,
we find the defendant,
Benjamin Stafford, guilty.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,
thank you for your service.
[GAVEL BANGS]
♪
It was the right verdict,
put away a guilty man.
Yeah.
But what happens the next time
or the time after that?
This job was hard enough
when we knew the difference
between real and fake.
But now?
♪