Diksha Sundriyal
The second season of Fox’s ‘Accused’ brings yet another bunch of fascinating tales about crime and punishment as we follow the stories unfolding from the point of view of the accused. The third episode of the season follows the story of a man who is on the verge of getting everything he has ever wanted but, at the same time, finds himself in a situation that forces him to make a difficult choice. It is this choice that eventually leads him to do something that will change the course of his life, but not in a good way. SPOILERS AHEAD
Marcus Faces a Moral Dilemma That Threatens His Friendship and Career
On the seventh birthday of his son, Marcus discovers that his company, Caraxon, which he co-founded with his best friend, Pete, is being bought by Google. While the initial offer is for a billion dollars, they are told that there is space for negotiation to increase the price. After all, Caraxon will give Google a tech that allows facial identification. It is a big win for the company, but on the next day, Marcus receives a threat. Someone has dug into the previous records of the tech and found a case from several years ago where a man named Xavier was shot dead by the cops because the tech misidentified him as someone else.
The case was eventually buried, with Caraxon’s name taken out of the files to keep them from falling into a legal hellhole. The blackmailer threatens to reveal the part their tech played in Xavier’s death, which might not lead to any legal trouble, considering how well their tracks have been covered, but it will put them on trial in the eyes of the public, and once that happens, they might as well forget about the whole deal with Google. In return for keeping their secret, the blackmailer asks for twenty million dollars. To Pete, it is nothing in comparison to what they are about to make. He advises Marcus to pay the blackmailer and be done with it. However, Marcus is not so easily convinced.
How did Pete Die? Did Marcus Kill Him?
What gets to Marcus about the information the blackmailer puts forward is the bias in the tech. It turns out that the tech had more than a 2% margin of error when it came to identifying Black people. In the case of white people, this margin was reduced by half, being only 1%. While Marcus was aware of Xavier’s case, he didn’t realize why the tech had made the error it did. When he confronts Pete about it, he brushes it off as an insignificant margin, saying that the problem has been fixed. When Marcus wonders why Pete didn’t tell him about it, the latter claims that he didn’t want to worry Marcus about the things that he couldn’t have fixed. Marcus, on the other hand, thinks it might be because of the racial bias in the tech, as well as in Pete.
Despite Pete’s advice, as well as his own wife’s, Marcus decides to go public with the stats. It isn’t just that he doesn’t want to pay the blackmailer, who happens to be one of their employees, who was disgruntled after she didn’t receive the money she was promised for helping to fix the bias in the tech. What really eats at Marcus is the realization that he allowed the tech to be used when it wasn’t ready yet. If Marcus had been more cautious with it, the cops wouldn’t have used it, Xavier wouldn’t have been misidentified, and he wouldn’t have been killed.
Pete doesn’t understand Marcus’ guilt and tells him to let sleeping dogs lie. But when Marcus shows how adamant he is about making their mistake public, Pete tries to stop him. This leads to a physical altercation, which ends with Pete falling down the stairwell as a horrified Marcus watches. The nature of the fall is such that nothing could be done about it. Pete dies on the spot. To make matters worse, their employee, who also happened to be their blackmailer, walks in at the exact moment Pete falls, becoming a witness to the death and testifying against Marcus in court.
Is Marcus Found Guilty? Does He Go to Prison?
When the episode begins, we find Marcus on trial. He has pleaded not guilty to the charge of murdering Pete. Interestingly, it is not the question of whether or not he pushed Pete down the stairwell but the question of his intention. According to Marcus, it was a mistake that happened in self-defense. According to the prosecution, it was plain and simple murder, with Marcus wanting to protect his reputation and blaming everything on his partner, who could take the fall for the whole fiasco with the bias in their tech.
While several testify for and against him, including his wife as well as his ex-employee and blackmailer, with the latter waiting for the sentencing of their own, in the end, it comes down to what the whole picture says to the jury. To swing them toward a conviction, the prosecution brings in Xavier’s wife, who is infuriated after finding out about the role Caraxon played in her husband’s death. Her testimony influences the jury, but then Marcus’ wife is brought on the stand, and she confesses that she was one of the people who stopped Marcus from coming out with the truth.
At the end of the day, it is proved that Marcus was ridden with guilt about what happened with Xavier and had already made up his mind about going public about it. He didn’t care that the deal with Google would definitely fall through once the news came out. He didn’t care that he would lose billions of dollars, not to mention the permanent stain on him and his company, which might be their downfall. He simply didn’t want something so big on his conscience for the rest of his life, and he would have never forgiven himself if the tech resulted in someone’s death, like it did Xavier’s, in the future. With all the details of the case in front of them, the jury finds Marcus not guilty of the charges levied against him, and he remains a free man.
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