Burden of Truth Recap: “The Right Road”

The season finale of Burden of Truth aired on The CW last night, focusing on the trial of Luna Spence – for a crime she did not commit – but it was Joanna and Billy’s job to prove that.

Joanna returned from the city, convinced that Mara Tran, her client Noah’s girlfriend, was the one who actually killed her father, but any of her evidence was circumstantial at best. Even when she presented the details to Billy, he had to play devil’s advocate, telling her that none of her suspicions would hold up in court. It was going to be tough to prove that Mara was the true murderer.

In Day One of the trial, Police Chief Mercer testified, painting a picture of Luna as a vengeful teenager, angry at her “supposed” biological father with all the evidence collected by the Millwood Police pointing directly at her. As Joanna shared with Billy that night, Mercer “laid out the entire case” and that the jury was “all Mercers” [given the fact they were mostly white men, and not a true jury of peers for Luna]; but then Owen showed up with the native boy whose father had mysterious died two years prior.

Day Two of the trial came all too soon with Joanna doing her best to paint Chief Mercer as a racist [which he clearly was], using the native boy’s father’s unsolved murder case as her justification. It seemed that she was able to paint him in a different light to the jury, but would it be enough. Next up that day was Luna’s friend Taylor, who was basically being forced to testify against her friend. From the beginning Taylor had been trying to do nothing more than help her friend, and she stepped up in a big way in court. She used her health issues [from season one where she and a group of girls had been poisoned by contaminated land at the Millwood High School, causing major health problems for them] as reason for her not remembering what she had stated to the police. It was a win for the defense, and proved to Luna that she had one more person on her side.

The one setback, however, was the fact that the Crown (the prosecution) had discovered Luna’s voicemail message to Joanna that had been deleted from her phone. Joanna willingly deleted that message in Billy’s presence, but sitting on the witness stand, Joanna claimed she had not deleted the message, using her other case with Noah as the reason. As viewers will recall, Joanna had been defending Noah Achari against the gigantic government contractor Lovand, the very company that had not only been harassing Noah but also had started focusing on terrifying Joanna – hacking her car and bugging her office, including turning her own law firm assistant Sunil against her.

As Day Three of the trial loomed, and knowing they HAD to prove that Noah’s girlfriend Mara was the real culprit, Joanna risked reaching out to Sunil to get access to the highly encrypted security measures on her father’s laptop that would give her the evidence she needed. With Mara on the stand as nothing more than a technology expert – to prove that anyone could have deleted that message from Joanna’s cell phone – Joanna had Mara right where she needed her.

Sunil had come through with photographic prove that Mara had been hacking into David’s laptop the night of his death. David obviously caught her, and she was the real murderer. The blood that Joanna had found at the crime scene was also further prove of Mara’s guilt, and when she finally let it slip that “it was an accident,” the judge was at first angry because Joanna had thrown in a surprise in the case [which she and the Crown had agreed would not happen], but the Crown’s attorney agreed that Mara’s testimony was enough reasonable doubt.

In the end, the Crown withdrew the charges and Luna was free to leave. She walked out of the courthouse, getting a BIG hug from her mother, seeing her supporters and eventually hugging her sister Joanna. There was also a surprise waiting for Officer Owen Beckbie, as the Mayor of Millwood offered him the job of Chief, replacing the racist Chief Mercer; and given the fact Owen and another officer arrested Mercer at the end of the episode, it appeared that Owen took on the job.

As the usual season finale montage played out, Bill visited his brother Shane in the treatment center – it’s clear that Shane is full-on nuts [and not taking his meds], Luna told Joanna she was leaving the city and transferring to a college closer to Millwood, Billy was preparing to move to the city to be closer to his brother, and Joanna was preparing to leave for her new job in Singapore. But at the last minute she called Billy asking him if he would have asked her to stay in Millwood with him, but he told her he couldn’t compete with Singapore. It was at that precise moment that she walked into his living room – where he was packing up his home – and they faced off with each other.

What did you think of the season finale? Were you pleased that Sunil came through for Joanna with the evidence she needed against Mara? Do you think Billy’s decision to move to the city is the right decision? What do you think Billy and Joanna will do now? Please share your thoughts in our comments section below.

[Photo Credit: Cause One Productions Inc./Cause One Manitoba Inc./The CW]

Make sure to check out our recaps from season one of Burden of Truth here.

Burden of Truth will be back for a third season, but those of us in the U.S. will have to wait and see when it will air on The CW.