The third episode of Fox’s legal drama, Accused, touches upon a number of interesting and topical issues like the extent of dependency on tech in the administrative sector, racial profiling, and the question of accountability and morality. In the third episode of the ongoing season, the central case of the involuntary murder trial isn’t as important as the context behind the incident is, which eventually turns out to be the deciding factor in the verdict issued by the jury.
Spoilers Ahead
Why Did Marcus Blame Himself For Xavier Skilling’s Death?
Longtime best friends Marcus and Pete had built their company, “Caraxon,” from the ground up, gathering a reliable workforce and spending nearly two decades developing Pete’s AI facial recognition software. After years of hard work and sacrifice, the moment of truth finally arrives on the seventh birthday of Marcus’ son Marcellus, as Google approaches the duo with a proposal to buy out their company for a billion dollars. Needless to say, both the founders of the company and their employees are on cloud nine; it’s a dream come true moment for every one of them. Marcus’ wife Lycia gets busy with future planning while bothering at the same time about whether the family will be able to cope with the changes that will inevitably entail after this.
At this point, it is necessary for us to know more about Marcus and Pete, as the events that follow are intrinsically connected with their actions and choices. From what we see in the episode, Pete is the glib-tongued, smart, genius techie who doesn’t seem averse to the idea of bending the rules to his own convenience. Pete’s sense of morality also fluctuates according to convenience, and Marcus is exactly opposite of that. Even though he manages their company’s business side of things, he isn’t really cut out for the corporate life. Marcus is quite sympathetic, honest, and sensitive, and Pete is well aware of the fact. No sooner does Marcus begin to rejoice in the company’s success, does he receive a blackmail call from an unknown individual who claims that Caraxon is responsible for the death of a certain Xavier Skilling. Years ago, during the beta testing of Pete’s facial recognition software with Sacramento PD, a technological error led to the death of Xavier at the hands of the cops. The blackmailer revealed that the software had a major glitch at that point in time as it showed a higher margin of error in identifying blacks and Asians compared to Caucasians, which ended up being the reason for Xavier’s tragic, unjustified demise. The blackmailer demands twenty million from Marcus in exchange for their silence. To Marcus’ dismay, he learns that Pete was aware of the glitch, chose not to inform Marcus about it, and rectified it himself. Later on, Pete deleted analytical records to ensure the issue remained hidden, and after learning all this, Marcus became reasonably livid with him.
Being a black person himself, Marcus is much more aware of the reality of institutional racism, and his aim behind the usage of the software in the administrative sector was to wipe out the prevalent prejudices. He was obviously quite horrified to learn that the very thing was responsible for the death of an innocent person and propagated the very corruption he wanted to root out of the system. Pete is a privileged white guy; no wonder he simply marks the unfortunate incident as human error—given the police killed Xavier without definite identification—and asks Marcus to pay the blackmailer without creating a fuss about all this. However, Marcus continued to share his grievances, and Pete considered his best friend to be insinuating him to be a racist, given he had knowingly hidden a disturbing instance of racial profiling, irrespective of whether it’s a technical or human error, from his best friend, who is a person of color. It didn’t matter at that point that Pete was well aware of the fact that an employee of their company, a person of color herself, who discovered the analytical error in the first place, was responsible for extorting Marcus to get a bigger share of equity. The nature of the crime and the effort of brushing the heinous incident aside were disturbing enough for Marcus to overlook other details.
Marcus, still feeling pangs of guilt, visited Xavier’s confectionery, maintained by his wife and their children, and not being able to reveal the truth ate him from the inside. Marcus became neurotic and anxious, something his wife Lycia couldn’t help but notice as well. Finally, Marcus confronted Pete for the last time privately in their office, and as the friends got engaged in a heated argument, which soon turned to a scuffle, Pete lost his balance and fell over a staircase railing, resulting in him getting fatally injured and meeting his end. Co-incidentally, the blackmailer employee, Ms. Wax, was the only witness of the incident, and Marcus was charged with involuntary manslaughter.
Was Marcus Guilty?
During the trial, Marcus’ lawyer makes a solid case for his client by proving discrepancies in Wax’s statement as an eyewitness, and how Marcus was trying to help Pete in the aftermath of the accident. Xavier’s wife, who has arrived to share her testimony as well, can’t help but express her agony and anger directed towards Marcus, whom she holds responsible for her husband’s death. This prompts Lycia to testify at the court as well, and she reveals that it was she who asked her husband not to reveal the truth to the public. You have to understand that as a black woman, Lycia has experienced her fair share of systemic injustice, and having a chance to gain the kind of position and power for the first time, she was not mentally prepared to accept a grim future for her family, which was a strong possibility had Marcus decided to bring the truth of Xavier’s death. But at the same time, despite being a black woman herself, she denied justice to another person of color, Xavier’s wife. Lycia breaks down in court and asks for her forgiveness. And I think this incident truly moved the jury at the end to share their verdict in Marcus’ favor.
After getting acquitted on all charges, Marcus takes a moment to share his apology with Xavier’s wife as well. This is a burden he has to bear throughout his lifetime, although no words or gestures are enough to even highlight how much the Skilling family has lost.
