Episode 10: One Angry Veronica
This one starts at school, right before Christmas break. Veronica tells Duncan that Meg is pregnant, but it turns out he already knew. The letter he took from Meg’s vent was to her aunt in Seattle; Meg wanted to go up there to live and raise the baby so her ultra-religious parents couldn’t get their hands on it. Before things can get too awkward, Dick stops by to tell them about a big party he’s throwing. He also mentions that Meg came out of her coma. Veronica held onto the visitor’s pass she used at the hospital last episode, so
she tells Duncan she can make him a duplicate. Downtown, Woody Goodman calls Keith to his office to tell him the sex tapes of Lilly Kane and Aaron Echolls have been stolen from the police station. Originals and copies were both taken—from separate safes—so it has to be an inside job. Woody wants Keith to find the tapes, but Keith is reluctant given his history with the Neptune Police Department. Woody says that’s exactly what makes him the right man for the job. Since the case against Aaron is pretty weak without the tapes, Keith agrees to do what he can.
At the hospital, Meg is surprised to see Duncan and Veronica and she 
apologizes for not telling him about the baby. She tells them her parents want her to put the baby up for adoption through some religious place that shoves scripture down kids’ throats. As they’re leaving, Meg begs Veronica not to let her parents take the baby (or raise it themselves) if anything happens to her. When Veronica gets home, her crappy day gets even worse as she finds out how she’ll be spending her Christmas break … on jury duty.
In the jury room, Veronica meets her fellow jurors. In keeping with the theme, we don’t learn any of their names but there are a number of archetypes present: the Captain of industry, who hates wasting his time and money with this crap; the Knitting Grandmother, who I think is Hispanic; the Sports Guy; the Single-Mom Waitress; the African-American Women’s
Studies Professor; and the religious Ned Flanders-type guy. Industry Captain says the case is open-and-shut and nominates Veronica to be foreperson of the jury—in a rather patronizing manner. At the police station, Sheriff Lamb (who’s pumping iron like crazy) tells Keith the evidence room is only accessed by magnetic keycards, and they’re changed every couple days, so lost or stolen cards aren’t an issue. Keith is certain it was an inside job now and asks for access to all the personnel files and backgrounds on everyone at the station. Lamb is eager to cooperate, which is very unlike him; I assume Woody told him to go along with whatever Keith wants.
In the jury room, Industry Captain suggests deliberation is a waste of time, but Veronica wants to review the facts. Basically, a girl named Anissa got off 
work at a car wash and missed her bus so she ended up hitchhiking. She was picked up by two Neptune dudes (Robbie and Hunter), who had some weed and Ecstasy, invited her to their motel room, and then decided they wanted to bang her. She wasn’t down for that, but they pulled a gun and beat the shit out of her. She fought back, grabbed the gun and fired a couple shots into the ceiling. The guys took off and she staggered outside and tossed the gun off the balcony. The gun was never found, but the boys were picked up later from her description and video from the motel.
On the other hand, the guys claim Anissa (who has a criminal record) is a hooker who offered to have some fun, but a black dude (her pimp, most likely) busted into the room and fired the shots into the ceiling, saying
Anissa owed him money. The guys took off and they say the pimp is probably the one who pounded her. The boys have no record, nor any guns registered in their names. Anissa called an ex (Anquon Simmons) for help and was still on the line with him when the cops showed up. Apparently, the motel manager waited a bit after hearing the shots, then went to take a look and saw a young black man with a gun run across the parking lot and vault the six-foot fence. Anissa’s pimp (Carnell Myles) turned himself in when he heard the cops were looking for someone who fit his description, and his story matches the boys’ perfectly, which would seem to indicate Anissa is full of shit.
They vote and one person votes guilty against eleven innocent votes, which means they’ll have to reconvene the next day and try to work things out. At 
least they aren’t sequestered. At the police station, Keith talks to Deputy Sacks, but just gets the party line about perfectly secure everything is. In the jury room, everyone’s pissed off about having to spend more time on the case. Industry Captain asks who the holdout is and it’s Knitting Grandmother. He asks if her reluctance to convict Anissa is because they’re both Hispanic, but she says she has other problems with the whole story. (“A ho that works her ass off all day at a car wash before hitting the streets? That’s something I never heard of.”)
At the police station, Leo tells Keith that security there isn’t quite as tight as Lamb makes out. He also mentions that the tapes would be worth a lot as
celebrity porn, which is an angle Keith hadn’t even considered. He calls a newspaper buddy to ask if he’s heard anything, and he promises to check with a tabloid editor he knows. While Veronica’s at work, Thumper stops by and asks if her friendliness with the rich kids will prejudice her enough to let a couple of rich frat boys get away with beating on a poor Mexican girl. So much for the anonymity of jurors.
In the jury room the next day, they look at the tape of a black dude running across the parking lot and jumping the fence, which supports the boys’ story. The Knitting Grandmother points out that the motel manager said twelve minutes passed from the time he heard shots to when he went to 
look, so why would a guy who just beat the hell out of a girl and fired off a couple shots wait twelve minutes before running away. At the police station, Keith has Logan brought in to ask if he knows anything about the missing tapes. Keith gets a call from his newspaper contact who says the tabloids are bidding on the sex tape and the bids are up to $500,000 so far. While Keith is out, Sacks drops off a file on current police personnel and Logan lifts a sheet of paper from the file. When Keith resumes his interrogation, Logan gets pissed off that he’d think he would help the guy who killed his girlfriend. Logan mouths off and walks out.
In the jury room, people are getting tense, so the Knitting Grandmother says she’ll change her vote if nobody else has changed their minds. (She just wanted to make sure the whole thing was being taken seriously.) They vote
again, but this time the Women’s Studies Prof and Veronica both vote with the Grandmother. At home, Veronica has done up the place for Christmas (and cooked Cornish game hens in lieu of turkey), so Keith gives her an early present. He had Mac revamp her old computer with new processor and hard drive. When she turns it on, two old articles about Cornell Myles pop up, talking about how he had a promising football future before blowing out his knee. I guess Keith knows what case Veronica is a juror for too.
In the jury room the next day, Veronica nudges Sports Guy into remembering Myles’s football career and his ruined knee. Knitting Grandmother comes up with another great question: “Any idea how this no-cartilage-having ex-jock managed to leap over that wall?” They figure 
out that one suspect’s father used to be Myles’s agent when he played football, which suggests he paid Myles to take the rap for his kid. Veronica wonders why else a pimp would turn himself in to help a couple of rich white punks. They still don’t know where the gun came from and Veronica comes up with a new theory: Anissa had the gun all along; she pulled it when the boys got rough and scared them off. But she was already on probation, so she’d go back to jail if she got caught with a gun. She was too beat up to ditch it herself, so she called Simmons to do it for her, which explains the delay between the manager hearing the shots and seeing the guy with the gun jump the fence. Since Myles couldn’t have jumped the fence, and Anissa wouldn’t have anything to worry about if the boys brought the gun, the only logical explanation is that it’s hers.
At the police station, Keith can’t find the email list for all the personnel there, even though Sacks insists it was in the file he gave him. Later, everyone who works there gets an email offering to buy the tapes for
$50,000. Keith gets the email list and agrees to sell the tapes, but gets a reply saying they’ve already been sold. From the syntax of the message, he knows it’s from Logan. In the jury room, they vote again and Flanders and Industry Captain are now the only two who want to acquit the boys. Industry Captain says he’ll never vote to convict. Veronica gets called to the judge’s chambers, where she’s told they will be sequestered until they reach a verdict.
At Duncan’s place, Logan watches the tapes of his dad banging his girlfriend and erases them with a degausser, burning the paper casings. Keith stops by and gives him shit for helping Aaron’s case, but Logan isn’t sorry. Keith 
wonders how Logan got the tapes for a tenth of what they were worth and Logan says someone at the Sheriff’s department must just be a nice person. In the jury room, Industry Captain reveals himself as a racist prick who won’t convict two white kids on the word of a “Mexican whore”. That makes Flanders change his vote and Industry Captain finally gives in, saying the conviction will be overturned on appeal anyway. As they’re leaving. The Women’s Studies Prof tells Veronica she was impressed by her brains and poise and says they could use students like her at Hearst College. Veronica mentions tuition and the Prof says they have some good grants and scholarships and that she’d fight to get Veronica in.
When Veronica goes outside, she finds “Muchas Gracias Bitch” soaped onto her car windshield. So I guess the rich people are mad at her again. She decides to skip Dick’s big party and heads home, where Keith asks her about Leo’s family. Keith goes to the station to see Leo. He asks about Leo’s sister, who has Down’s Syndrome and needs money to go to a special school. That’s why Leo stole the tapes and why he sold them so cheap. Turns out
Leo saw Logan looking at the email list and knew he was the one who made the offer on the tapes. He knew Logan would destroy them, so he sold them. Keith’s report states that Logan probably obtained the tapes, but since the evidence is gone there’s no point going after him. He puts the blame on Leo for “insufficient oversight”, which gets Leo fired. Keith gets a call and goes home to tell Veronica that Meg died from a blood clot, but her baby girl survived. It’s New Year’s Eve but Keith goes to bed early, leaving Veronica to ring in the New Year alone. Well, not quite alone … Wallace shows up just in time to celebrate with her.