The Ledger

2.2 Wages of Love: Jerry Orbach Plays a Lawyer

In this early episode (2.2), a married man and his new girlfriend are shot to death in the man's apartment. His wife and son are the primary suspects. Jerry Orbach appears in a pre-Briscoe role as the wife's defense attorney.

The episode begins with a couple of cops eating dinner at a Chinese restaurant talking about how little money they make. A delivery man enters, speaking frantically in Chinese, and he leads the cop upstairs, complaining that he got stiffed out of $26, and that something was wrong. The cops explore the apartment and find the bloody bodies of a man and a woman in bed. Cerreta and Logan arrive and investigate. They identify the man as a Mr. Cullen, but notice that it appears that he is the dominate presence in the apartment: 4 closets of his clothes, but only one of women's clothes. It turns out that he's married -- separated, actually -- and the woman in bed with him is not his wife. I bet you can see where this is going.

The visit the man's wife, who seems upset, but not overly distraught. She recoils when they delicately ask her where she was at the time of the death. She says she was having dinner with her son. The dets want to talk to her son, and she asks whether it is ok if she calls him to say his father is dead. They say ok and leave. They visit the son, Jamie, who is upset and sweaty and says his mother wouldn't kill his father.

They focus their investigation on the ex-boyfriend of the girl found alongside Mr. Cullen. She worked at Christies, the auction house, and her boyfriend is a younger, failing law student. They even go so far as to arrest him, but they don't have much evidence. Cerreta is pretty convinced the ex-boyfriend had nothing to do with it.

Cerreta and Logan discuss food while sitting in the park, and then turn to the case. They realize that Jamie said his mother wouldn't kill his father, but since he was with her at the time, he should have said, "She didn't kill him. That raises their suspicions. At the time of this conversation, by the way, Cerreta is reading a copy of the New York Ledger, the namesake of this website. He is reading a story about the case.

After breaking the mom's alibi by talking to some of Jamie's fellow law students, they arrest Mrs. Cullen, 29 minutes into the episode.

At the arraignment, Jerry Orbach plays her laywer, Frank Lehrman. Post-arraignment, Stone and Lehrman confer, trying to come up with a deal, and Orbach issues his first-ever L&O wisecrack: "It's called plea bargaining, not plea scalping."

Schiff urges Stone to deal, but Stone thinks he can make out a murder case. They review all the evidence, and find that a jewelry clerk accidentally notified Mrs. Cullen about a necklace Mr. Cullen had purchased for his mistress. Also, they learn that a locksmith had given Mrs. Cullen a key to her former apartment, where the murder took place. They bring the son in to the conference room to get more information. They confront him with evidence about the key, which seems to point to the notion that Mrs. Cullen went to the apartment specifically to kill her husband.

At trial (41 minutes), it's difficult to tell who is doing better, but Stone's case suffers a blow when the son changes his testimony about they key, recanted his deposition statement that he arranged for his mom to get a copy of his father's key. This upsets Stone, and he's getting a little nervous. In an unusual gambit, he decides to ask the judge to change the charge against Cullen from Manslaughter to Murder. He feels he's established pre-meditation, and he figures the jury won't want to let the woman walk. The judge allows it, but before the jury can vote, Stone and Lehrman both get nervous and finally come to a plea arrangement: 2 counts of manslaughter, 9 years in prison.

As the episode ends, we learn from jury members talking to the media that they were about to find her guilty on the murder charges.

The episode is notable, of course, because of the early appearance of Jerry Orbach as a character other than Lennie Briscoe. His performance is subtly different from what he does as Briscoe -- a little slicker, a little more intellectual. He's also a little bit stiff acting-wise, as if he hadn't quite gotten comfortable in the role.

Also of note is that the trial judge's name is Rebecca Stein. She shows up in several later episodes, but: in several other episodes, a different actress plays Judge Rebecca Steinman. I guess when the writers find a name they like, they stick with it. Another interesting casting note: Keith Diamond plays a character named "Jackson" in the episode. In real life, Diamond was shot and critically injured by his senile father a few weeks ago in NYC.

Posted by adm at April 21, 2004 12:12 AM

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