Jim is a gifted con artist. Oh, he’s on the side of the angels on the show. He always protects innocent people and hunts guilty ones. But he keeps a mini printing press in his car for the purpose of making up business cards so he can convince people he’s someone official. He lies about his identity regularly. He tends to approach potential witnesses with a lie instead of the truth, and it works for him. Honestly, we don’t know a lot about the crime he went to prison for, but if it involved violence, they should’ve known it wasn’t him. That’s just not his style.
Jim is hired by Susan Alexander (Joan Van Ark), a reporter who is doing a story about a man she insists was wrongly imprisoned. Dave Kruger (John Lawlor) was convicted of murdering Cheryl Wilson, and Susan doesn’t believe he did it. Jim’s not convinced, but he’s willing to go along with it for at least a while. They interview the defense attorney (William Prince), who had a stroke not long after the trial and remembers . . . well, more or less depending on how his brain is doing. They interview the coroner who did autopsies on both Cheryl and her mother, who died of a heart attack after the trial.
Honestly, the scene with Arnold Newcomb is one of the most tragic in the series. It’s clear Newcomb used to be a fairly sharp guy, and he knows that in his better moments. However, his better moments can be fleeting, and things slip through his mental grasp. He wishes, he says, that it were all one way or another—either all there or all gone. You can’t blame him. Knowing that you have it and are going to lose it again soon? I can imagine little more painful than that. It’s clear Jim feels much the same way.
There is a saying that everyone in prison is innocent. Jim knows that idea. He ought to. He also knows that he actually was innocent, and I strongly suspect he knows what the odds are that Dave actually is innocent. I don’t, entirely, but I do believe that there are plenty of people in prison who actually did what they were convicted of, even though wrongful convictions are astonishingly high. You can’t blame Jim for not being entirely sure he wants to believe that a guy convicted of killing his girlfriend is innocent.
The fact is, domestic abuse cases are themselves fairly common. There are a lot of people killed by their partners. Dave has to have known that he was the obvious suspect, and if I were him, I’m not sure I’d even blame them for that. Now, we know he didn’t do it, because Jim’s on his case, and that’s the way the show works. But the way the real world works, there are a lot of guys like Dave who really did beat their girlfriends to death. They don’t always get convicted, either.
Take Care of Rockford Files: Shots fired. Boat chase with shots fired.