I've got two possibilities floating around in my mind, aside from the obvious Richard Trying To Get A Friend To Buy Him deal, which I'm discounting because if he actually counted on that at all he'd have hidden his tracks. So. The first and most likely is that this is another suicide attempt; he's hoping that by so obviously compromising their security, he'll get Sam to kill him. The second, which assumes a greater depth of personhood than we've seen but he might just be good at hiding, is that he's playing it like the movie and trying to find his wife's actual killer. If he thought he could get the Marshals investigating in certain places (was one of the places he contacted the department in the hospital dealing with prosthetics?) he might've thought he could get them on the right track somehow. Not that it'd do him much good personally; you can't be un-slaved and I don't see Commerce making an exception even in a case where a convict was later proved innocent. But he might just want the guy punished? [ponder]

Anyway, great stuff. :)

Angie