Has there EVER been a satisfying guilty verdict on this show?

I'm addicted to the plotlines as much as anyone, but it does bother me that every single guilty as hell Donnell et al client gets acquitted. I don't get nervous anymore when the jury reads its verdicts in criminal trials when there's a "scum" defendant with a seemingly hopeless case because I ALWAYS know it's going to be NOT GUILTY - the writers have shown us this consistent pattern with NO exeptions that I can think of.

There's also a pattern of Guilty verdicts often coming down when there's either an innocent client - often being framed by or covering up for someone else - or a technically guilty client with either a heartwrenchingly sympathetic story or a relatively petty crime that incurs an absurd sentence: doctors and family members getting convicted of murder in mercy killings of their consenting, terminally ill and suffering families and patients; life sentences for both a deaf mother who killed the man who raped and killed her young daughter and Christian Scientist parents who denied thier sick son medical treatment, genuinely believing prayer to be the best thing; a teenage boy who got 20 years for perjury when he refused to incriminate his father for murder.

When I'm actually rooting for the main characters in a case because I'm led to believe the client is innocent and there's an acquittal, it usually means I'm going to find out later that they were guilty afterall. George Vogleman, a Latino teenage guy who was dating a priest or minister that pretended to report an anonymous congregant's confession, Alan's friend, played by Patrick Dempsey, and a pregnant woman who claimed to have killed her husband in defense of herself and their unborn child - but then gives birth to a mixed race baby who clearly was not her husband's - were all thought to be innocent by their lawyers and by us until after the trial.

In other words, justice is almost never served on this show, giving the frustrating impression that the system is not just imperfect but absurdly arbitrary.

OCCASIONALLY Donnell et. al will save an innocent or sympathetic client. Their two death row exonerations, the moral passion defense for Gerald Braun, Rachel Reynolds in the pilot, Steven Frenault who Eugene thought was guilty until after the trial Season 1... I know there are others. These are the only cass where I get to really feel good about what they're doing and satisfied with the result.

I think the closest the prosecution came to winning a case I was glad for them to have won was the guy whose brother burned his adulterous wife to death in a Middle Eastern country (I forget which one). Even then, I had some mixed feelings though, because it seemed the brother on trial might not have known about the killing in advance -it wasn't clear to the audience. He did pardon his brother for the crime, but if he hadn't his brother would've been sentenced to death... so yeah, mixed feelings if I'd been on the jury. Every time I was unambiguously rooting for the prosecution - which was a lot - they lost.

I'd like for Helen Gamble to SOMETIMES get the satisfaction of successfully putting away a heinous criminal. When she's not pursuing a client she knows is likely innocent or a mercy killer, I actually tend to like and sympathize with her.