User:DReifGalaxyM31/Mr. Monk Gets Jury Duty

"Mr. Monk Gets Jury Duty" is the sixteenth and final episode of the fourth season of Monk, and is the 61st episode overall. It features many guest stars, including Carlos Gómez, Wings Hauser, Benito Martinez, Emmanuelle Vaugier, and Bonita Friedericy.

Plot
After a dangerous chase through the streets of San Francisco, Lieutenant Disher and Captain Stottlemeyer capture "Most Wanted" criminal Miguel Escobar, who is wanted by the FBI for drug trafficking crimes in seven states, and arrest him for a local homicide. Escobar is notorious for escaping custody, having escaped twice, so Stottlemeyer must take extra precautions to ensure that this does not happen while Escobar is in his custody. Captain Stottlemeyer learns that the United States Attorney General is ordering him to turn over Escobar to the federal government, and is to do nothing more than detain their prisoner until the hand-off, following an extradition hearing.

While things are going well for Stottlemeyer, Adrian Monk receives some bad news: he’s been called for jury duty. Monk loathes the idea of being stuck in a room with eleven other people, but he has no choice when he’s selected as a juror in a minor robbery trial, regarding a man who was stabbed while out making a bank deposit. When time comes for the jury to deliberate, everyone votes “guilty” except for Monk. It’s eleven against one, but Monk is sure that the defendant is innocent.

While Monk tries to win over his fellow jurors by picking apart the evidence, he looks out the window of the jury room and begins to suspect that there is a dead body in a garbage dumpster near the courthouse. Monk gets Stottlemeyer and Disher to check it out, and sure enough, there’s a dead woman’s body in the dumpster.

Monk begins tracking the murder investigation outside the window while simultaneously dissecting the robbery trial with his fellow jurors. Monk suddenly realizes that the dead woman in the dumpster was a member of the jury pool. Meanwhile, he slowly but surely convinces his fellow jurors that the defendant in the robbery case was innocent. When Monk finally convinces the last hold-out to vote “not guilty”, a strange thing happens: Juror Number Twelve, a woman who had been one of the first to support Monk, suddenly changes her vote to “guilty.”  It doesn’t take long for Monk to figure out what’s going on:  Juror Number Twelve killed the woman in the dumpster.

Here's What Happened
Juror Number Twelve is Miguel Escobar’s girlfriend. Stottlemeyer and Disher are soon to be handing over Escobar to the feds in the very courthouse where the robbery trial is taking place. Number Twelve needed to get on a jury to gain access to the courthouse so she could help Escobar escape during his transfer of custody, which is about to take place. Days ago, Number Twelve spotted the woman from the dumpster in the assembly room, killed her, and got on a jury using the victim’s identity. Once on a jury, Number Twelve needed to keep the jury deliberating until the time came for Escobar to arrive at the courthouse.

Unfortunately, that time has come, and Juror Number Twelve has pulled out a gun. She ties up and gags all the jurors, overcomes the bailiff, and intercepts Escobar on his way up the courthouse elevator. She shoots two federal agents (who survive thanks to their bulletproof vests), and she and Escobar try to escape via a garbage chute on one of the courthouse’s upper floors. Fortunately, Natalie suspects something is wrong in the jury room, and rushes there to untie Monk, who quickly figures out the escape plan and alerts Stottlemeyer. Escobar and his girlfriend are nabbed by the police as they leave the chute, and Monk has more than fulfilled his commitment to jury duty.

Monk later introduces Natalie to his other jurors.

Trivia

 * The episode itself is heavily based on the film 12 Angry Men.
 * Miguel Escobar is loosely baesd on historical Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar.
 * The order for Escobar to be turned over to the federal government comes from the U.S. Attorney General. Being that this episode aired in early 2006, it could be said that the order comes from Alberto Gonzales, who was the Attorney General at the time.
 * In this episode, Monk has difficulty saying the word "butt." However, in "Mr. Monk Goes to the Office," he had no trouble saying "Caucasian buttocks."
 * It is never mentioned how Escobar's girlfriend got the gun into the jury room considering the tight security.
 * Escobar was being transferred from local to federal custody. The local (state) and federal courts do not share courthouses in San Francisco, so there would have been no reason to make the transfer in the lobby of the local (state) court.