The Ledger

7.2 I.D.: McCoy Jailed for Contempt

In this unusual episode (7.2), McCoy ends up jailed for contempt after he challenges a judge who is sexually harassing Jamie Ross and who isn't giving McCoy a fair chance at a criminal trial. The trial involves a woman who killed her sister because she was having an affair with the sister's con-man husband, or so it appears. We later discover that there is much more to the story.

The episode begins with two businessmen walking through the lobby of a large office building. They are complaining that they have to come in so early to participate in a video conference call with some people in New Zealand. They discuss the international dateline's relevance to the proceedings for a few seconds, and make a grisly discovery as they step into the elevator: the naked body of a dead blonde woman. Briscoe and Curtis are called to the scene. The woman is carrying no ID (having no clothes), and her fingerprints are not in the system, so they have to try to figure out who she is the hard way. Unfortunately, this seems like it's going to involve showing a polaroid of her to people in each of the 407 offices in the building.

They begin by talking to the technician in charge of the elevators, who has an elaborate computer system that tells him that "Car 3," the elevator in which she was found, was called around 3 AM. They use old-fashioned detective work to determine that the person who called the elevator is a CPA who does a lot of work with models. They visit him as he prepares to leave town, and he is defensive, but innocent. He reports that as he was leaving that night, he called for the elevator, then stepped back into his office to pick something up. He therefore missed the elevator with the body in it. Not a likely story, but it turns out to be true.

They get more information about the movements of the elevator from the elevator technician, who tells them that the body was probably stashed in the elevator on the 18th floor, due to some dual action on the elevators on that floor at that time. They talk to the secretary on that floor (colorfully played by Aida Turturro, aka Janice on The Sopranos), who says that perhaps the victim was a woman she talked to on the phone earlier that day, a tourist from the Midwest who needed directions to the building. She says the tourist said she was staying at the Barrington Hotel.

They head over to the Barrington Hotel and look at a guest list. Based on the information they have, they determine the woman is probably Lucy Sullivan, from Terra Haute, Indiana. They enter her room, and hear the shower turned on. They enter the bathroom, and find a woman there. She identifies herself as Lucy Sullivan. Oops! But there's more to the story: she says that her sister Joanne has gone missing, so perhaps it was her they found in the elevator. They show her the Polaroid, and she confirms the body is Joanne's. Lucy says Joanne had a boyfriend in the city and was looking for a job. They learn that Joanne had a warrant out for her arrest. They visit the NJ detective investigating the case (played by the same guy from that episode about the black guy pretending to be white), and he says Joanne was involved in conning casinos in Atlantic City, a profession that had gotten her in trouble with both sides of the law: the mob was also out to get her. He says she and her husband(!), William Dunbar, ran a scheme called "hand mucking" in which they swapped cards with each other while playing poker.

They talk to Lucy Sullivan again, and you get the impression something is not quite right with her: she is a little too innocent-seeming, a little too guileless. They talk to the receptionist on the 18th floor again, who IDs Mr Dunbar as the tenant on her floor. They search his office and find a .25 caliber slug matching the one found in the dead body. They visit Dunbar's apartment (on an arrest warrant, not a search warrant) and perform a questionable search during which Curtis (just barely off-camera) finds the murder weapon and a picture of Lucy Sullivan with Dunbar. They talk to the superintendent of the building who says he saw Lucy leaving the building the morning of a few days earlier. This is strange, since (a) Lucy had previously told the dets she didn't recognize Dunbar and (b) Dunbar was supposedly her sister's husband. I guess our suspicions about her turned out to be founded.

The detectives develop the theory that Lucy was having an affair with Dunbar, and killed her sister Joanne to be with him. Based on all her lies and the account of the super, they arrest her (27 mins).

The trial judge for the case, Judge Nathan Parks (played by Jerry Adler, aka Hesh from The Sopranos) flirts with ADA Ross during a hearing over the suppression of some evidence. The hearing involves whether the gun should be suppressed because it wasn't in plain view. (As I said, when Curtis finds the gun, the director cleverly had left barely him off-camera.) He takes the unusual step of taking everyone -- the prosecutors, the detective, and the defense counsel -- over to the apartment to check it out. He flirts with/harasses Ross some more t the apartment, asking her about her habits when she sleeps over at a man's house. Everyone is rolling their eyes at him and unsettled. McCoy goes so far as to object to this behavior and tells him it is "inappropriate." Nonetheless, in an apparent attempt to win Ross's favor, he rules that the evidence is allowable against Sullivan, since she could have no expectation of privacy. Outside, Ross tells McCoy she doesn't really mind the harassment. (But wait til she sees what's coming next.)

At trial (33 mins), Judge Parks asks a witness if he is sure he saw Lucy leaving the apartment on the day in question. He has Lucy stand up, and then -- oddly -- asks Ross to stand up, too, so the witness can compare body types. Everyone rolls their eyes some more. Regardless, the witness says he is sure that Lucy is the woman he saw. As Det. Curtis testifies, his pager goes off: Mr. Dunbar has been found dead in New Jersey, having washed up from the Hudson River. Looks like the mob caught up with him.

Back at trial, the defense presents a tour ticket purchased by Lucy Sullivan at the time she was supposedly being spotted at Dunbar's apartment building. How'd she do that? Schiff says she has a knack for being in two places at the same time, a statement which leads McCoy to finally realize what observant viewers may have suspect from the beginning: Lucy might really be Joanne, and Joanne might really be Lucy. In other words, the con-woman killed her sister and assumed her identity, so she could escape from the mob.

Back at trial, everyone's waiting for Ross to show up. She enters with an old lady in tow. But before we can learn what this lady is doing there, Judge Parks starts harassing the hell out of her, accusing her of being late because she was having a rendezvous with a man. McCoy gets angry, and tells the judge that the woman with Ross is from Terre Haute and will testify that the defendant is not Lucy Sullivan. This means that the person on trial is not who she says she is. The judge is upset and calls everyone into chambers. He says it's McCoy's fault that he's been conned and he declares a mistrial, but won't permit a re-trial. It seems clear that he's behaving this way because he's angry with McCoy and Ross for reacting against his interaction with Ross.

McCoy is flabbergasted and appeals the decision to an appellate court, in a proceeding that we get to see. The panel of judges is swayed by his argument, and they allow a retrial. However, they assign the case back to Judge Parks, over McCoy's objection.

At the new trial, McCoy tries to get Curtis to testify again about the gun he found during that search, but the defense counsel objects and Judge Parks sustains the objection! He says that since it now turns out that the defendant, Joanne Sullivan, was married to Mr Dunbar, she had an expectation of privacy in the apartment. McCoy is furious, and -- during a terrific bit of acting from Sam Waterston -- raises the evidence about the gun anyway, despite repeated warnings from the judge. Judge Parks goes ballistic and orders McCoy cuffed and placed in contempt. He's hauled out of the courtroom and everything. The judge demands that Ross continue the examination of the witness, and doesn't give her time to prepare.

In the funny scene that follows, Schiff visits McCoy in the courthouse lockup [screen shot]. Schiff looks at McCoy in the jail cell, and harrumphs, "Nice..." in his trademark style. McCoy introduces him to the other prisoners in the cell, and they talk about what to do. Schiff says he's going to visit the judge and talk things over with him.

Schiff does so, and tells Judge Parks he was out of line and asks him to step down from the trial. Parks responds angrily but calmly. Schiff then pursues the issue with a judge who reviews the various transcripts and is decidedly perturbed by Parks' handling of the case. In issuing his decision, he tells Parks: "You just caught a bad case of the flu," meaning that Parks must step down from the trial, but he gives him a face-saving way of doing so. Parks resists for a moment, but it's inevitable.

A new judge is assigned, and she instructs the jury that some witnesses will retestify and that new evidence (we assume the gun) will be introduced. Joanne seeks a deal with McCoy for Man I, but he refuses, which causes her to finally snap out of her "nice Midwestern girl" persona for a minute and proclaim that her boring sister had "no life," and so it was no big loss that she was killed. This doesn't exactly garner her a lot of sympathy from the prosecution, and she is promptly convicted of murder.

The episode is notable because McCoy actually ends up in jail over the contempt charges, and also because the episode employs two future cast members of The Sopranos: Aida Turturro (who has been on L&O numerous times) and Jerry Adler. It's also notable because of the unusual subplot involving Judge Parks and his harassment of the unflappable Ross.

The title of the episode refers both to the initial process of having to identify the victim without anything to go on, and also to the dual identity of Joanne/Lucy Sullivan.

Posted by adm at May 26, 2004 11:58 PM

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