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Marissa Atkins lies in a coma in her hospital room. She’s been
asleep for nearly six months, and shows no signs of recovery. Her
future is locked away in a dormant mind, just like the future of
the boys who did this to her are locked in the wheels of justice.
Victor Jackson is on trial, for what is essentially attempted
vehicular manslaughter. The prosecution is trying to demonstrate
that Victor intentionally ran Marissa over with his mother’s car.
The defense claims that Victor tried to stop, and that it was the
fear of an inexperienced driver that led him to flee the scene of
the accident. The truth is somewhere in between, and must be
discovered by the angels; Rafael for the prosecution and Andrew
for the defense. With Tess acting as Judge, the trial begins.
And while various experts take the stand, Monica tries to make
some headway with the only witness to the alleged crime, Victor’s
cousin, Josh.
Rafael brings to the jury’s attention, the fact that Victor and his
cousin had been playing a video game called "Carjack 2000:
Millennium Mayhem." In this violent game, players get points for:
stealing cars, killing drivers, breaking roadblocks and running
over prostitutes. Andrew argues that the game bears no relevance
to the case and that violent crimes are not spawned from
representations of violence in entertainment.
Meanwhile, Monica is learning more about Josh. She finds out that
he’s been living with his aunt and uncle, Victor’s parents, while
his own mother and father are in the midst of a divorce. She
learns of his victimization by tougher kids at school, and about
his academic decline after he started playing Carjack 2000 with
Victor. She also, using her God-given gift of seeing into the
hearts of others, discovers that what happened to Marissa was no
accident. She sees the boys driving through the rain-soaked
streets, jamming angry rap music and getting into the Carjack 2000
mindset. She watches as Victor spots Marissa, scantily clad under
a raincoat. He sees her as a prostitute, as "street-scum" from his
video game, and he does what is needed to garner the 20,000
points, he runs her down. Now that she knows this, she works with
Josh to humanize the victim, to put a person’s face on the unreal
figure that his cousin tried to kill.
In the end, she is successful. With Marissa awake and in the
courtroom, Josh breaks down and confesses. He says that Victor
was trying to kill her, he was sick of playing the game on a
computer screen and wanted to do it for real. Of course when you
do something for real, you must face real consequences, especially
when the angels are on the case.
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