Justice For Taystee

  When critiquing a fictional television show, one must often separate logic in order to get the most enjoyment out of it.  However, in a human being's mind, sometimes a person cannot help one self, as people are logical in nature.  With that being said, I want to discuss many of the factors involved in the death of Piscatella in order to help Taystee out should she try to appeal her murder conviction.  To be fair, we don't know exactly what the verdict was, although we do know it's bad.  At best, she will be receiving a life sentence.  Even though there is no death penalty in the State of New York, she is now in a Federal Prison, which can often overrule that.  

   This is my maiden blog dedicated to one of my favorite shows, Orange Is the New Black.  There are many things that occurred in Season 6, which were the aftermath of the riot that took place in Season 5.  Although the end of Season 6 saw Piper get out of Litchfield, Morello have potential problems with her pregnancy, and Blanca possibly getting deported, this blog is about the verdict of Taystee's case and how I hope in Season 7 she can at least be exonerated of murder.  

   There are many things that don't add up, at least in the view of myself, a member of the audience.  Because I'm a member of the audience, I know things that many of the characters do not.  The other nine people along with Taystee in that empty underground pool, which at one point contained a tied up Piscatella, saw him leave the area alive.  In fact, during the interrogation, none of them were even aware that Piscatella was dead, some of which until long after the investigations ended.  We all watched as the CERT team stormed Litchfield.  Earlier, Piscatella's death, or at least a death in general, was foreshadowed when one of the men was yelled at for almost shooting an inmate with a pepper bullet, which if shot directly at someone can kill a person.  As Piscatella made his way out of the bunker, after the CERT team filled the hall with smoke bombs, that same man accidentally shot Piscatella directly in the head and killed him. At that moment, it was implied that they would try to blame it on the inmates, which is exactly what happened early in Season 6.  Cindy and Suzanne were still hidden in the bunker after the team took everyone else away.  They watched as the team came back with an already dead Piscatella and shot him directly in the same spot as the pepper bullet, with the gun Freida had in the bunker.

  Here's where my logical brain kicks in!  I know that there was a crooked coroner that the CERT team got their hands on to take care of this.  However, I think Taystee's defense lawyer was able to get an opinion of a second coroner, who stated that the bullet was shot post-mortem.  If the bullet was shot post-mortem, there is no proof that Tasytee killed him, even if her fingerprints were on the gun and she shot it after Piscatella's death.  In the vein of realism when it comes to court decisions made by the jury, often times the people of a jury can be presented with a fact like that but still come to a consensus going the way they were going to vote no matter what.  That's what it looked like here.  What drives me insane is that ballistics would be able to determine that the pepper bullet entered Piscatella's body first and was the cause of death, and had none of the inmate's fingerprints on the CERT's pepper bullet gun.  Not to mention, the trajectory of the regular bullet completely contradicts how the FBI envisioned how Taystee killed Piscatella.

   With all that, I don't see how the murder can be put on Taystee.  Even if her fingerprints are on the gun, it can be proven that the pepper bullet killed Piscatella.  Plus, if he was already dead, what would be the point of shooting him again?  Yes, she did hold the gun to his head earlier, but Cindy took it from her after she broke down when deciding to to kill him.  Since it was Freida's gun in the first place, her fingerprints were on it too.  The rest of the women corroborated that they saw Taystee hold the gun to Piscatella's head, which she did.  We know Taystee will get more time because she did admit to instigating the riot, due to the death of Poussey being pretty much glossed over, as well as painting CO Bailey as of victim with Poussey's death being an accident.  Unfortunately for Taystee, Cindy testified against her, which she clearly felt tremendous guilt over.  I worry that Taystee will go after Cindy in Max due to this, screwing things up for herself just after she learns that she was acquitted of the murder.  That's similar to how heated Red was at Freida for framing her and decided to choke Freida over finally seeing her grandchildren for the first time.  Taystee is all too familiar with wanting justice, as she screwed up negotiations by refusing to agree when she found out that going after Bailey was not in MCC's jurisdiction.  

   Changing gears for a second, I want to also bring up Daya shooting Humps, him eventually dying, and her going away to Max for a life sentence.  Daya did shoot Humps but his death did not specifically result from the gunshot.  Sophia and the Litchfield nurse were able to keep him stable.  Humps ended up in the same medical room that contained Suzanne and Kukudio, which was ironic considering he instigated the fight between the two women.  Kukudio admitted to Suzanne that she blew air bubbles into Humps' IV, which caused him to have a stroke and later die.  I feel like forensics would be able to determine that as the cause of death.  Unfortunately, we learned that Kukudio died herself due to her injuries sustained by Suzanne after Humps instigated the fight.  With all that said, wouldn't that somewhat change what Daya was charged with?  I feel like at worst, it should be attempted murder, or even manslaughter.  Those things may not have given her a life sentence, since she technically did not murder Humps.  However, after turning herself in and getting life, it seems Daya has completely given up and has turned to drugs and weird relationship with Daddy.

   Back to the topic at hand!  We, the audience, saw several of the women state that they saw Taystee with the gun to Piscatella's head but none saw her actually pull the trigger.  Another thing that bothered me is that everyone was aware of the video that went viral of Piscatella torturing the inmates.  However, the prosecutor and likely the jury decided that it was motive for Taystee to murder him, even though she was not even one of the inmates he tortured.  Yes, it was dumb for Red to lure Piscatella there, endangering herself and several other inmates.  However, Piscatella wasn't even supposed to be there.  He dressed in a CERT uniform, a team he was not a part of, and went into the prison himself without authorization.  Not only that, Caputo had suspended him before the riot even started, due to the circumstances of Poussey's death and it being under his watch.  All that should lead to questioning why Piscatella was even in the prison during the riot in the first place, even if he did end up dead.

   Many people have complained about the character of Piper, stating that she's annoying, is the epitome of white privilege, and hasn't done anything redeeming that was not about herself.  In Season 7, I'd like to see Piper redeem herself in the eyes of the audience and her former fellow inmates now that she's out of prison.  While still in there, she made it clear she would write a memoir about her experience in prison, which is exactly what this show was based on.  However, I'd like to see this go even further.  Now that Piper has left Litchfield, regardless of the circumstances, she could help Caputo further with helping out Taystee for taking the rap for the murder of Piscatella.  Piper was there in the bunker and saw everything.  She saw Red let Piscatella go and watched him leave on his own accord.  She was also one of the inmates tortured by him.  Though it's understandable for Piper to worry about her now wife Alex, who still has plenty of time in Litchfield, it would be nice for Piper to help clear Taystee's name and show why the riot happened in the first place.

   I read some arguments that the root of the riot taking place started when Alex killed Aiden in the greenhouse.  People have to remember that Aiden worked for Kubra and was sent to kill her for testifying against her former drug boss.  Even though Aiden mentioned he got hired by Litchfield because they would take just about anyone, he wasn't truly a guard.  During the investigation, after finding his body cut up and buried in the garden, they came to the conclusion that Lolly was to blame and they put her in Psych when she confessed.  Again, you can blame this on MCC for the lack of background checks but it started even before when Fig was in charge.  Alex had guilt so she wanted to confess later on, just after Lolly had been found to be the culprit.  When Aiden was choking Alex, Lolly walked back in the greenhouse and saved her, hitting him in the head numerous times.  We all thought he was dead right there but when Alex came back to bury him, he was still alive and she had to finish the job.  When she and Lolly came back the next morning to bury him, they saw Freida had found out, was bored, and wanted to help.  She convinced Alex and Lolly to cut up his body into six pieces and bury it across the garden.  After it was all over, investigators still couldn't figure out who Aiden was because he had several aliases, which again proves that a lack of background checks was at fault for letting him in in the first place.

   Some fans claim that this chain of events led to the guards being stricter, which led to Blanca passively defying them, which led to the accidental death of Poussey, which led to the riot and its aftermath.  Again, a lot of this was probably bound to happen sooner or later.  Caputo thought that after Fig was out of the picture, things would improve but then MCC came along, which he thought was going to be a good thing, when they bought the prison and saved it from shutting down.  While MCC did make things progressively worse, it was doomed long before MCC was around.  After all, Tricia's death was due to Pornstache, locking her, a known drug addict trying to stay clean, in a closet with the drugs.  Even though Pornstache was eventually unfairly imprisoned and set up by Daya and company, he was still a piece of garbage and more than deserved what he got.  It's called Karma!  This might have been the only way to get rid of him, because he would have likely still caused problems.

   I'm getting off on a tangent here but I'm just trying to point out some of the things that led to Poussey's death, which led to the riot.  All of these factors, especially the negligence of MCC and those before, should be factors in Taystee's case.  Going back to Piper maybe being an activist on the outside to help Taystee, it would be kind of cool for her to try to help out other inmates too.  She could be an advocate for Blanca to help her from deportation.  She could help Aleida find a job.  She could get really involved with many of the cases of her former fellow inmates at Litchfield and shed the persona she was known for.  She saw first hand the treatment of inmates in prison and got some unfair treatment herself, even though she did get favored at times, such as being granted Furlough.

    I'm not sure if this would help but Cindy could always recant her testimony to do the right thing.  It would likely add a lot more time to her sentence and might not even do any good for Taystee at this point, but the effort would be appreciated.  Suzanne saw how it went down too but she's too unstable to take serious, unfortunately, especially when off her medication, as we saw in the beginning of Season 6.  There are just so many things to take into account that would get to the bottom of how Piscatella died and help possibly exonerate Taystee of murder.  I'm also wondering if there was even any questioning of the CERT team to begin with.  Since Caputo figured out at least one person that helped put Taystee away for life, or possibly on death row, he could investigate further and possibly convince one of them, maybe even the one that initially shot Piscatella in the first place, to admit to what actually happened.  Though what Taystee did started out as justice for Poussey, as well as the inmates in general, I hope that Season 7 leads to justice for Taystee herself.  For instigating the riot and for her original crimes that got her sent to prison, she deserves those sentences and was already trying to deal with the consequences.  However, she did not murder Piscatella.  Justice for Taystee!