- "I know I have a lot of problems, but I'm not stupid. I remember. It was the worst day of my life."
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Lahey was the retrial of Annalise's face case. It was the case she and her students were most passionate about but winning the case ultimately led to Nathaniel Lahey, Sr's death.
Nate Sr. had spent most of his life in jail under what started out as drug convictions. He was selling drugs to provide for his family. At times when he was released, he couldn't afford the court fees because he was a felon struggling to get a job. His son Nate Jr. would visit him with his mother, but contact was cut off after Nate Sr. beat another inmate, Gerald Reinhoff, to death. In the lead up to the murder, Sr. had spent a year in solitary confinement and was having mental health problems that were ignored by the prison doctors. Annalise and her team wanted to prove that he was criminally insane at the time of the murder to get him a 'not guilty' and release.
Case[]
Work on the case began with Annalise having Nate Sr. sit a psychiatric evaluation in order for her to argue he was criminally insane. Annalise said the notes said he asked for a slice of chocolate cake after the murder, with blood still on his hands. Sr. was repulsed and initially refused to say that during his evaluation, saying the jury would 'send him to the chair'. He eventually came around and said it during his evaluation with Dr. Phillips, who later determined that he was mentally ill at the time. After Annalise shared the good news with the class, Connor confronted her about making a call to President Hargrove to let him back into the university after he failed. They had a heated argument which ended with Annalise taking Connor off the case and making Gabriel the new second chair. ("It's Her Kid")
Annalise told the class they had to decide between a jury trial or a judge trial. Michaela said it made sense to go with a judge trial becuse the jury wouldn't understand the complicated terms being used. Gabriel said that the case was about emotion and a jury trial would support that. Annalise mentioned that judge Erwin Coughlin could be biased towards the case and asked Connor if he agreed. He said he thought whatever Gabriel did, who thought the judge would be biased. Annalise agreed and so the team opted for a jury trial. She visited Nate Sr. with Nate Jr. to tell him it would be a jury trial, and he was excited to take the stand. Later Nate Jr. asked Annalise why she was making it seem like his father would take the stand. That night, Gabriel called Annalise to tell her that the prosecution added Nate Jr. onto their witness list.
In court, Nate Jr. was being crossed by A.D.A Alvin Cox. He asked how old Nate was when he learnt his father sold drugs. Nate said he didn't recall so ox concluded that he knew. Nate said that his dad dropped out of school at 16 to box professionally and when that didn't pay the bills he had to resort to other methods. Cox then asked what Sr. was like around the house, causing Annalise to object. He then asked if he ever knocked Jr. around, so he said that his dad never took his work home. Cox clarified that Jr. felt safe at home and he said yes. Cox then presented into evidence a letter that Nate Jr. wrote to the parole board when his dad was facing possible release. Annalise objected saying the letter wasn't in discovery and Cox said it only just became relevant. Both attorneys were called to the bench by Coughlin. Annalise challenged the letter's relevance and Cox said it was character evidence. The judge ruled in the prosecution's favour and so they were allowed to present the letter to the court. Cox had Nate Jr. read a portion of the letter to the court, where it said that he didn't want his father to get out of jail.
During recess, Nate Sr. accused his son of intentionally sabotaging the case. He said he remembered losing that parole hearing when he was meant to win it. Annalise tried to cut in but Sr. continued that he started picking fights with the inmates and disrespecting the guards as a result, and then they put him in solitary. He finished by saying everything that had happened was because of the letter. He told Annalise he didn't want to see Jr. anymore and Annalise said he had to be in the courtroom as somebody who loved Sr, otherwise he would be 'the bastard who turned on his own son'.
That night, Michaela and Asher met to plan Connor and Oliver's bachelor party. She ended up asking him to help discredit Dr. Charmagne, the prosecution's psychiatric expert. He didn't want to at first but Michaela convinced him, so he got some information from the D.A's office and then went to Annalise's apartment. He told her that Nate Sr's case was the last time Charmagne was allowed to testify because he had been offered a job with the govenor.
The next day in court, Cox asked Charmagne if he believed Sr. was insane at the time of the murder. Charmagne said he believed Sr. was pretending to have hallunications and delusions, which was a sign of malingerling - faking an illness in order to get a not guilty verdict. Annalise asked why his diagnosis was so different to the defense's expert, Dr. Phillips. He said that his field wasn't an exact science, so Annalise asked if it wasn't because his new boss told him to testify for the prosecution. He was confused, so Annalise asked if Birkhead had hired him as the head of a department working for her. Cox objected but Coughlin overruled. Charmagne said yes, he was hired by the govenor so Annalise moved to have his testimony struck from the record and the judge agreed.
Later, Nate Jr. visited Sr, who told him he wanted to take the stand to defend himself against what everybody was saying in court. Jr. went to Annalise's apartment to convince her and she agreed, then called Gabriel to begin research on cases based on insanity where the defendant took the stand. Laurel went over to his apartment to help.
In court, Annalise began her cross of Sr. by asking him about what solitary was like. He said he had a photo of him and Nate Jr. that helped until the guards took it, at which point he slowly started to hear and see things and his thoughts were colliding. Annalise asked how he felt when he was let out of solitary and he said he was scared because he wasn't used to people talking to and looking at him. She then asked Sr. to describe what happened when Gerald Reinhoff approached him in the yard. Sr. said Reinhoff was 'talking smack' before pausing. He continued that he wasn't a man that day, he was a bomb and if it wasn't Reinhoff it would have been somebody else. He said solitary made him very sick and he wasn't himself as a result.
When Cox began his cross, he asked what the 'smack' talk coming from the victim was about. Sr. said Reinhoff wanted to fight the boxer. Cox said that in his psychiatric evaluation he claimed to be hallucinating, then asked how the jury was meant to believe him. He then asked if it was possible Sr. threw the first punch and he said no. Cox then suggested it could have been Joe Fraizer, Sr's imaginary cellmate. Annalise objected but Cox continued anyway, saying he was trying to understand what happened that day. Sr. said he was trying to explain and just because he had a lot of problems it didn't make him stupid. He continued that he remembered and it was the worst day of his life. Cox caught onto that and said that Sr. knew it was the worst day of his life, meaning he regretted it, meaning he couldn't have been insane. Annalise objected again but Cox continued, calling Sr. a liar. Eventually the judge cut in and put a stop to it.
In class, Annalise went over the wins and loses in the case so far. The letter was considered a loss, the discrediting of Dr. Charmagne was considered a win and putting Sr. on the stand was considered a loss. Annalise said that closing arguments were in three hours and wanted ideas on how to save the case. The entire class was silent before Gabriel presented a file for how Annalise could get a mistrial. He said that Cox lied about crimes Sr. didn't commit and that was ground for a mistrial. Annalise took a vote and everybody agreed that she should move for a mistrial. Despite this, they came up with another idea for the closing statement and didn't go ahead with the mistrial.
In court, Cox said in his closing statement that the defense lied and Sr. was violent before he went to jail. He said that the 'father son sob story' was fake and the real victim, Gerald Reinhoff, needed to be considered. In Annalise's closing statement, she stated Sr. spent 492,750 minutes in a 'cement box smaller than a parking space'. Gabriel began using masking tape to mark a rectangle around Annalise. She continued that a neutral, court-appointed doctor found Sr. insane at the time of the murder. She also touched on what solitary confinement can do to the brain. She said the facts were simple, that Sr. came out of solitary after a year and did something he had never done before. She finished by saying if the jury still didn't believe that could happen, she was going to show them a fraction of what it was like for Sr, alone in his cell.
- "492,750 minutes, and all he heard was this."
Outside the courthouse, Annalise apologised to Connor for taking him off the case and said she knew the mistrail was his idea. Gabriel came out and told them the jury had a verdict so they all rushed back inside. The jury found Sr. not guilty by reason of insanity. ("It Was the Worst Day of My Life")
Trivia[]
- The judge on the case, Erwin Coughlin was the judge in the Mahoney Case in 2005 in Ohio, meaning he had moved to Pennsylvania in the years following.
- In the episode, It Was the Worst Day of My Life, the case is a flashback and the scenes in the class are present day. After Alvin Cox's cross of Nate Sr, the rest of the episode is present day.
See also[]
- Lahey v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (case)
- Inquest into Nate Lahey Sr. Killing
- Nate Lahey Sr. Killing
- Nate Lahey Sr. Wrongful Death Lawsuit
Appearances[]
| Season 5 | |||||||||||
| "Your Funeral" | "Whose Blood Is That?" | "The Baby Was Never Dead" | "It's Her Kid" | ||||||||
| "It Was the Worst Day of My Life" | "We Can Find Him" | "I Got Played" | "I Want to Love You Until the Day I Die" | ||||||||
| "He Betrayed Us Both" | "Don't Go Dark on Me" | "Be the Martyr" | "We Know Everything" | ||||||||
| "Where Are Your Parents?" | "Make Me the Enemy" | "Please Say No One Else Is Dead" |