The Ledger

5.12 Progeny

In this episode (5.12), an abortion doctor is assassinated. Is a radical pro-life leader behind her death? Sure looks like it. Briscoe and Logan investigate.

The episode begins with the doctor talking to a parking garage attendant. She climbs into her Mercedes and drives off, but shots ring out a moment later, and the attendant discovers her shot in the head, dead. Briscoe and Logan find her wearing a bulletproof vest and come across a wanted poster with her name and face on it in her purse.

They visit her place of work, which is almost surround by rabid abortion protesters who are apparently there every day, harassing the doctors and the patients. They learn that a woman named Nancy Gunther specifically requested the last appointment on the day she was killed, came in, refused an abortion, and left. The detectives reason that she came in just to learn the doctor's identity and make her movements predictable. Under pressure, she admits to the detectives that she turned this information over to two other anti-abortion activist: a de-frocked priest named Sealy and a man named Randall Jenkins who has disappeared and quickly becomes the chief suspect.

As the detectives are searching Jenkins apartment (where they find the murder weapon), they get a call that Sealy has Jenkins over at their organization's HQ. When the detectives show up, Sealy is standing next to Jenkins giving a press conference about how Jenkins was doing God's work by committing the murder. Briscoe and Logan push through the reporters and arrest Jenkins.

He demands a trial because he wants to use it to deliver his political message, and at the urging of Sealy, he offers a justification defense: he was saving lives, so he had to act. His defense falls apart, however, when Kincaid talks to his estranged wife and learns that the only reason he killed the abortionist was because he was mad about his wife's getting an abortion. (Jenkins had previously burst in on his wife while she was at a different abortion clinic preparing to have an abortion.) With no justification, and therefore with no defense, he pleas, but then fingers Sealy as the one who orchestrated the crime. Sealy is standing right there as he does it, and it's clear that Sealy has orchestrated this too: realizing the the political opportunity would be lost without a trial, he offers himself as a defendant.

At trial, Sealy represents himself, and things are going ok, until McCoy applies great pressure and forces Sealy to admit that the reason he arranged for Jenkins to commit the murder instead of doing it himself is that, in his heart, he knew it was wrong. So there goes his justification defense. He pleads to Murder 2.

Schiff succinctly wraps up the irony of the situation: Sealy's admitting that "he can't kill anyone nails him for murder."

Casting note: Sealy is played by veteran character Edward Herrmann, who is most famous, perhaps, as the chief vampire on the Lost Boys. He's appeared in several other L&O eps, including one or two with Diane Wiest, his Lost Boys co-star.

At one point in the episode, Schiff references the fact that Kincaid attended Harvard Law School, and McCoy tells Kincaid he doesn't want to turn the trial into a debate about feminism. This picks up a theme in their relationship from McCoy's first appearance in the series. It's worth pointing out that as he tells her this, he's standing extremely close to her, in an intimate way that suggests they are involved romantically.

Posted by adm at March 30, 2004 09:08 PM

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