I'm sure there's a topic around here with the same title. Just didn't find it.

This contains spoilers for Magnum episode Blind Justice!

Anyway what I was wondering... I saw an episode of Magnum PI couple of days ago. It was the episode called Blind Justice. The plot is about a girl who witnessed the death of her mother after she got in a fight with her husband. Her husband beated her up and left after a gunshot. Her husband been in jail before for killing his first wive but got acquitted. So with every evidence against him he was probably up for another prison time. But than the girl told Magnum everything. Her mother wasn't killed by the husband, she took her own life. So Magnum had to make a choice: Letting a potential killer go out free in a matter he has nothing to do with of course with the chances he might kill somebody else, or having an innocent man going to jail.

What do you think MacGyver would do in this situation?

The ending of the episode was a bit unclear to me. There was physical evidence (a recording of the fight that night and the gunshot) but it got erased by the villainous lawyer during the trial in which Magnum was testifying for the girl. After they find out it was erased Magnum says to take a walk with his friend outside. Than he mentions something about being set in position where in something unexpected happens that makes things turn out for the better, then expected. I think meaning by that is that they had to wait on what the jury decided. After all he testified for it. Because my first thought was he couldn't solve the case, that he lost on this one.

But back to my question. Do you think MacGyver would help out a man who's been in jail before for killing his first wife, but has nothing to do with his second wife's death with the chances he might kill again, or letting an innocent man go to jail?

MacGyver is a strong believer that people can change for the better.
He believes in giving people a second chance. We see that very strongly in the episode Lost Love when he's convincing Pete that Kosoff is a changed person. We also see this when he deals with Earl Dent.

So to answer the question, Yes I'm certain MacGyver would defend the ex-con if he was certain he didn't do it. He would strive for justice to be served on the right people, not an easy scape-goat.

But Dent wanted to go straight. Kosov was putting up an act.

Indeed not an easy decision to make. Now like I said there was a recording of the fight posing as physical evidence. On the recording you hear the man threatening to kill her if she humiliated him again and that he got away with it before. You can also hear him beating her. Than he leaves with tyres screeching when she killed herself.

Death threats and abuse is enough for Mac I think to turn him in, after all he tried to get to Ellen making her to turn in her husband in Jerico Games.

If we take on the case of the husband in Magnum and place it in Mac's world, you would still think alike? Death threats is maybe one thing, beating is something else. But he was innocent on the murder of his wife.

That was the difficulty Magnum had to deal with. Maybe you have to see the episode itself to make up your mind.

I think Mac would go for some sort of community service as a punishment. The husband was acquitted for the murder of his first wive, then there's the beating, which was erased (though after it was played). But of course, you never know what it might do to a man of being accused for a murder he didn't commit, despite his past. That might change him and that might be enough for Mac to give the man a second chance.

What does that have to do with the fact that MacGyver was willing to believe that they had both changed? Which is the point I was making. He doesn't hold anyone's past against them. In spite of how naive that might be at times.

MacGyver would never let an innocent person go to jail if he could stop it.

I think he would strongly (to the point of forcing) encourage the women to tell her story to the police and prove that the man didn't kill his wife.

He might also be trying to get the man sorted out with his anger issues too.

It's really not that complicated. What the man may or may not do in the future is irrelevant and MacGyver wouldn't even be thinking about that side of it. He would be dealing with the facts of the moment and making sure an innocent man didn't' go to jail.

I think MacGyver would do anything humanly possible to get the man off the hook for the murder - which he didn't commit. At the same time he would fight just as vigourusly to get him convicted of the crime he really committed - beating up his wife.

Just my opinion