Avery Hemmings was a defense attorney for coffee importers Pierson David Bartlett and Pierson David "P.J." Bartlett Jr., when they were each accused of murdering Jenna Ludlow, P.J.'s fiancée.
Background[]
Hemmings was madly in love with her friend P.J. since college, even hiring private investigator Roger Fromm to survey him and watch the numerous women he dated. Hemmings was so obsessed she always believed every woman would be out for his money except for her, and she even found a way to be the family attorney. She was livid over P.J. being engaged to Jenna Ludlow, who really was out for the family's money. Disgusted by Jenna seducing P.J.'s father, Pierson Sr., into an affair, recording their sex, and faking a pregnancy for massive grands of payouts, Hemmings stormed right into Jenna's brownstone and fought with her, calling her a whore and a gold digger. When Jenna swore to keep bilking the family all through the marriage, Hemmings snapped and killed Jenna with one of her own lamps. She then cut Jenna's clothes to make it look like a rape-murder and set her home on fire to cover up the evidence.
Trade[]
When the Bartletts were tracked and the affair was revealed, Hemmings rushed to defend P.J. while Pierson received Trevor Langan as representation. Hemmings sabotaged the trial by having Fromm bribe juror Debra Jackson to hold out on a guilty conviction to hang the jury, in exchange for paying for her son’s cerebral palsy treatment. It worked, but Debra confessed in exchange for no jail time, and Fromm ran off to the Dominican Republic, leaving his surveillance of P.J. behind. Hemmings tried to misdirect when the team were turning father and son against each other, barring the team from P.J. when Pierson threw him through a window from suspecting him of killing Jenna, and barred the team from searching Pierson's properties for surveillance evidence after Fromm was revealed to previously be on Pierson's private security.
Later, the detectives realized Jenna had her own video camera after seeing a video of her in the apartment, finding two memory cards, one of them in the camera itself still in the smoking remnants of the brownstone. Hemmings and the Bartletts were brought back to watch the tape, where Hemmings was horrified that she was caught on camera killing Jenna and ran off before she was revealed as the murderer. Since she was kept from leaving by precinct security, she ran up to the roof intent on killing herself, standing on the edge of the rooftop. She admitted everything and professed her love for P.J. as a defense for her actions to keep him to herself. P.J. tried to hold her legs to keep her from jumping, but with one final shout that she'd never let him be hurt again by people around him, she plummeted while he was still holding onto her. Both of them crashed into a car and were killed.