Deed gets angry when a brother judge deals leniently with a man convicted of political offences from whom the judge has had certain favours. He makes an accusation of corruption, despite Jo's misgivings.Meanwhile, Jan Dobbs is in Deed's own court charged with murder, and the hit-and-run case from the previous episode is still not concluded. Of course, the bigwigs of the legal profession are still busy scheming to marginalize both Deed and Jo Mills.

Deed has an environmental case before him, in which a company operating a large-scale waste incinerator is accused of damaging people's health by air pollution. Jo Mills represents the parents of a damaged child, but is losing. Then it comes out that the company deliberately hid a fault at the incinerator which made its emissions far worse. Meanwhile, Rufus Barron comes up with evidence to support the claim that Neil Haughton took a bribe on a defence contract. Then the evidence is lost, and Haughton demands that Deed should be impeached for unprofessional conduct.

Deed questions an unpleasant prison officer closely about the death of Paul Settle, a young prisoner who was stabbed to death and then partly eaten by his cell-mate Ben Bradwell just a week before he was due to get out.

The Judge is worried that Settle was black, while Bradwell was known to be a vicious racist. In another case, Deed comes up with a thoughtful sentence for a drunk driver who killed a child.

Meanwhile, Deed and Jo seem to be growing apart.

In a case in Deed's court, his daughter Charlie is the junior counsel defending Henry Free - an animal rights activist charged with murder after a fire-bomb at an animal research unit killed an eminent scientist. Then Henry falls out with his leading counsel and asks Charlie to defend him - but Deed advises her not to. Part of Free's defence is that his group had been infiltrated by an officer of MI5, the British secret service, acting as an agent provocateur, and Deed is angry when Charlie reveals the officer's identity in court.

Meanwhile, Jo is helping and encouraging Charlie - and she is back with her old flame, Marc Thompson. Deed is losing her.

Deed has to judge a case concerning Jo's boyfriend, Marc Thompson. Marc wants to take the decision not to resuscitate a two-year old patient at his hospital who has a weak heart and is in a coma, if the child's heart stops again, but the parents disagree.

In another case, Deed has to sentence a young thief, and the youth then dies in custody. All this brings back Deed's memories of his own traumatic childhood. He is spoiling for a fight and argues with Jo - who announces that she has decided to marry Marc.

Deed's involvement in the case of a far-right British National Party councilor brings him to the notice of terrorists who decide to send a woman to kill him. When the assassin meets Deed, she has a surprise in store, but she still plans to carry out her orders.

Meanwhile, The Lord Chancellor sends Deed to sit on an International Tribunal in the Hague, as the British government sees him as a mischief maker at home. Deed finds himself judging the case of a British soldier accused of war crimes by killing eleven Iraqi civilians.

Continuing the story of a war crimes trial in The Hague. Deed finds the defendant is a victim of the British government's attempts to develop an exit strategy out of the continuing occupation of Iraq by western forces, and he has to balance the interests of justice against the possibility of saving British lives.