The Ledger

3.12 Right to Counsel

In this colorfully-written episode (3.12), a rich old lady is found murdered in her big apartment. It turns out the woman is worth $20 million, and many people stand to gain from her death. The initial suspect is her much-younger boyfriend, a 38-year-old fashion designer in serious debt. Logan, Briscoe, Stone, and Robinette work up a pretty strong circumstantial case against him. On the advice of his working class attorney, the designer please to Manslaughter, and is sentenced to at least 7 years in prison. However, during his allocution, he mis-describes certain details of the murder, and Robinette suspects he might be innocent. Further investigation points to the trust attorney responsible for the management of the victim's estate, who was also a friend of the victim and stood to gain a substantial amount of money from her death. It turns out that this attorney set up the fashion designer, and even referred him to an attorney who he knew from childhood and whom he knew would be likely to seek a plea bargain. Once they match a fingerprint from the scene to the attorney, he's arrested and tried for the murder. The designer's lawyer admits she was somewhat complicit in railroading her client. Things look pretty bad for the defendant, but he does show up for an early morning court appearance. Guess what Briscoe and Logan find when they visit his apartment.

The episode is notable for a few reasons. It's unusual to see a defense attorney become a suspect in a crime, but that's what happens here. Also, it's rare to have an initial defendant get all the way to pleading guilty before they realize he's the wrong suspect. The teaser is a little bit strange, too. It starts outside the victim's apartment building as a couple of painters discuss an impending marriage (or something like that) and the camera follows them into the building. But there is a cut as they enter the victim's apartment with the doorman. The conversation goes on for a long time, and so -- rare for teasers -- the whole sequence drags a little bit.

I mentioned the episode was colorfully written. There are a lot of little jokes throwaway one-liners that liven up the dialog a little bit, and one older female witness the detectives visit even seems to be flirting with Briscoe a little bit. All in all, it's a pretty decent straightforward episode with a few not-quite surprising twists, but it still holds your attention.

The title seems to refer ironically both to the counsel that the victim received from her attorney and eventual murderer, and the bad counsel that the wrongly-accused fashion designer received from his attorney.

Posted by adm at February 4, 2004 09:53 PM

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