How To Get Away With Murder made law student Laurel Castillo (Karla Souza) the center of attention, as Annalise (Viola Davis) takes on a case of alleged patricide and tries to uncover exactly how sordid her husband’s actions have been.

‘How To Get Away With Murder’ Recap

Annalise’s newest client, a 17-year-old named Ryan who shot and killed his father, claims that he killed him to protect his mother from his father’s abuse. Annalise informs her students that emotionally-charged cases such as this – particularly where the death of a cop is concerned – are won and lost in jury selection. They’re looking for divorced women, victims of abuse and the authority phobic.

Unfortunately for Annalise and her team, the prosecution manages to get the abuse angle thrown out. The judge agrees that without actual evidence of abuse, it’s not pertinent and that Ryan’s blog detailing the abuse is inadmissible. However, Laurel manages to get the blog into evidence after finding a passage that corroborates one of the prosecution’s witness’ testimony. Now the abuse angle is fair play.

Despite the blog and the abuse being put before the jury, it still looks like Annalise and the students are going to lose the case. What they need is a mistrial. Taking matters into her own hands, Laurel prints out a packet about how a jury can vote with their heart and cast aside the law, and leaves it on a bench for a juror to find. Frank (Charlie Weber) watches on, confronts Laurel and then tells Annalise what he saw – omitting who the student was. Annalise, ever the opportunist, uses the situation to their advantage and instructs Frank to bring it to the DA.

After the district attorney tells the judge that jury tampering was at play, the judge has no choice but to declare a mistrial. Adding to Annalise and Ryan’s good fortune is that the press has lauded Ryan as a courageous hero who stuck up for his mother. Since the court of public opinion doesn’t see him as a sociopath, it was deemed prudent to charge him as a juvenile, which will see him serve only some community service.

Annalise & Sam

While Annalise is still winning in the courtroom, her home life continues to be a mess. After confronting Sam (Tom Verica) about the penis pic on Lila’s phone, she finally hears from him that he was having an affair with her. Sam explains that Lila was persistent and deeply troubled, so he gave in and slept with her. Annalise, who was his mistress before she was his Mrs., loses it and kicks him out of the house, not wanting to hear him claiming that he never loved Lila. Bonnie (Liza Weil), who was standing at the foot of the stairs, heard the whole thing.

After a long day working, Annalise knocks back a couple of drinks and meets up with Nate (Billy Brown). He doesn’t understand why she wanted to see him, especially after having him fired. Annalise doesn’t know what he’s talking about and is stunned to hear him yell at her about how she told the police he was investigating Sam to get leverage in having Rebecca’s (Katie Findlay) bail lowered. Nate also drops the bomb that Sam was not at Yale the night Lila was murdered; he was in Pennsylvannia. He then storms away while Annalise puts together that Bonnie must have been the one to take that information to the police, which was how she got the interrogation tape, and becomes more worried that Sam killed Lila.

When Annalise gets back to her office, she reams out Bonnie and lets her know she’s aware she’s more loyal to her husband. She then confronts Sam about where he was the night that Lila was murdered. He admits he’d driven back to Yale, claiming Lila was saying that she was going to harm herself, but maintains he did not kill her and drove back to Yale that night. Annalise then drops in on Sam that he is going to give a psych evaluation to Rebecca. During the exchange, Rebecca reveals that Lila called her older boyfriend Mr. Darcy and said he was a sad man bored with his marriage. Rebecca doesn’t recognize him.

Rebecca, did however, recognize the wallpaper when she went upstairs to use the bathroom. It was the same green and gold background in the infamous penis picture on Lila’s cell phone. When Wes (Alfred Enoch) goes to see how she’s doing, he finds her apartment empty and calls her worried. Rebecca says she can’t trust Annalise and tells him to check out the wallpaper, which he does in the middle of the night and runs into his startled professor. He tells her he knows she knows Sam is Mr. Darcy.

Sam’s Murder Flash Forward

In the flash-forwards, the group is still trying to cover up Sam’s murder. Laurel, who has her boyfriend Todd and winds up getting into a sexual relationship with Frank, keeps dodging his calls. He’s trying to apologize to her, but she keeps telling him it’s too late – until she offers to take care of getting the murder weapon (the statue) back to Archer (Matt McGorry). Laurel brings it to Frank’s apartment, asks him if he really meant it when he said he’d do anything for her, and pulls out the statue.