The Ledger

Judge Dread

The episode begins by showing us the crime as it is being committed: a man sits outside the courthouse, reading the paper. When a livery car drives up, he stands up and approaches it. A woman exits the vehicle with a guard of some sort, and the woman is talking about what is happening in court today. It is apparent she is a judge. The man gets within about 20 feet of her, and then aims his gun and prepares to fire. The woman's guard responds, draws, and fires at the same time as the assailant. The guard is hit, but he kills his assailant.

When Briscoe and Green show up, we learn that the guard is a police detective assigned to protect the judge. He recriminates himself for not being careful enough, but they tell him not to worry about it, that he saved the judge's life. The judge, meanwhile, is unfazed by the incident and has gone about her business with the court. She is brusque with the detectives, and doesn't seem interested in giving them any information. They quickly get the impression that she is a hard-ass, on and off the bench. They try to figure out which of the people she recently sent to jail would want to kill her, but there are so many candidates, they don't have much lucking finding anyone. They also try to determine if anyone in her personal life had a motive, but that doesn't lead anywhere either.

Eventually, by cross-checking some prison visitation logs, they come up with a suspect: a CPA convicted of fraud who got a heavy sentence from the judge, and who was otherwise treated harshly by her. Soon after, the detectives theorize that this accountant hired a hitman to kill the judge. They determine the identity of the person who acted as a middle-man, and he confesses his role in exchange for a lighter sentence for an arson he was involved with.

The accountant goes on trial, and here is where the episode takes a turn for the boring. The trial goes on and on and on, and there are no substantive plot twists or even developments. I felt like I was just watching people testify, at length, about stuff everybody already knew. I fell asleep twice while watching the trial scenes.

In the end --- spoiler coming --- McCoy cuts a deal with the accountant, because he and Lewin feel the man was essentially exploited by other criminals in prison, who pretty much forced him into going through with the contract hit. Lewin is her usual mealy-mouthed self, even in a scene where the judge (who was nearly killed) confronts her about the generous plea deal. She doesn't get much sympathy from either McCoy or Lewin who feel she brought this on herself by being such a hard-ass. Much of the trial is very much about "blaming the victim," and it seems preposterous to me that a person who tried to get a judge killed would be treated so sympathetically by any prosecutor, especially the District Attorney of New York.

The episode was written by Richard Sweren, who, as I've said many times before on this blog, is often responsible for weak episodes that are poorly written and far-fetched.

The episode is listed on TV Tome as being part 1 of 2, so I imagine that part 2, "Deep Vote," somehow picks up on the plot of this episode, but I haven't seen it yet.

Posted by adm at February 19, 2004 09:49 PM

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