Netflix The Lincoln Lawyer season 1 recap guide: Episodes 1 to 10

The Lincoln Lawyer episode 8 recap: The Magic Bullet Redux

The eighth episode of The Lincoln Lawyer starts with Mickey meeting up with Cherry again. She gives him information on one of the clients Glory Days occasionally returns to town to visit. Armed with that knowledge, Mickey has Cisco pay the man a visit to call Glory Days back to LA.

In court, Sonia Patel takes the stand. The prosecution uses her to indicate Lara and Trevor had a toxic relationship, that Trevor cut everyone out of her life and was very controlling over her. But Mickey questions Sonia about all the emails she sent Trevor essentially begging for a job. If she was bitter that Trevor wouldn’t hire her, then she’s not exactly impartial.

The next witness is a forensic expert who is called to confirm the report of a large amount of gunshot residue (GSR) found on Trevor after the murder. Mickey tries to bring up that the expert could be wrong. What if the report is a false positive and Trevor got covered in GSR due to transference (like he brushed against something that had GSR already on it). The expert actually had a report thrown out for submitting a false positive in the past. He says yes, that’s true, which is why his supervisor has been signing off on all of his work ever since. Initials are present on the bottom of the report.

Since the GSR report is the most damaging evidence the prosecution has, Mickey was planning on casting doubt that it might have been a false positive. The supervisor’s initials are a major setback and worse, they weren’t properly photocopied on his copy of the report. The judge mentions that if Mickey had accepted the continuance he might have had time to further examine the document and the cut-off initials on the bottom. For now, he’ll have to deal with it. Trevor is pissed since it ends up being a damaging day of testimony against him.

But that night while working late, Mickey finally has that magical moment of epiphany. He gets his magic bullet and lays it all out in court the next day with the assistance of a videographer, mechanic and ballistics expert.

It all goes back to Eli Wyms. We know he fired over 90 rounds at the cops, which would lead to a staggering amount of GSR. Eli was arrested hours before Trevor and loaded into a cop car. One of the bullets broke the car’s headlights, so it was taken to a mechanic where they fixed it and got it back on the road. Normally, the mechanic would also have cleaned the interior but due to the broken headlight, he didn’t have time.

The car was never cleaned between the usage between picking up Eli and picking up Trevor. There was GSR all over the inside. That’s how Trevor wound up with a large amount of GSR on him and Mickey proves it by showing the video footage taken by a videographer on the scene. It was the same squad car used in both arrests.

Next, Mickey calls Anton Shavar to the stand to show the jury that he was a viable suspect that the police ignored. He also uses the footage Cisco captured of Anton threatening him to prove that he is capable of violence and he carries a gun on him. All in all, it looks like Mickey has all but won the case.

That night, he finds Izzy at a concert with her ex. She came millimeters close to relapsing. He takes her home.