Near a year later, the judge was in a case with Annalise Keating again. This time, she was representing a client (Ben Carter) who was convicted of killing his fiancée who is up for a retrial. The former gang member, who was covered in tattoos, told Annalise she jumped to her death after a fight over their daughter, who wasn’t actually his. Annalise kept the paternity secret but argued in court that she was suffering from postpartum depression. After recess, Nate was called to testify, revealing a newly-recovered voicemail in which Ben's fiancée begged him to come back to her. The ADA on the case was then given evidence of Annalise's deleted voice message where Ben admitted that his daughter wasn't his own. This was then spun by the ADA to make Ben sound like he killed his fiancée because his daughter wasn't his own. However, once receiving evidence of the security footage which showed Ben's fiancée killing herself, Annalise called the chief public defender, Virginia Cross, to the stand as she was the person who secretly gave the tape to Annalise. Annalise requested to the judge that she be able to treat Virginia as hostile. She questioned why this evidence was withheld during Ben’s first trial and played the footage. She claimed she only learned of it during the appeal and was too overworked during the prior trial to sift through all the evidence. This was enough for the judge to dismiss the case and release Ben Carter. ("It's for the Greater Good")
