The Ledger

8.11 Under the Influence

In this episode (8.11), McCoy commits the ethical transgression which will ultimately lead to Ross's testifying against him at the disciplinary committee. The episode revolves around a drunk driving incident that kills three people, including a 5-year-old boy. McCoy pursues first-degree murder charges, even though the defendant was apparently to drunk at the time of the accident to form intent. As I'll describe in more detail later, McCoy hides evidence regarding the man's drunken state so that he can make the charges stick.

The episode begins with a mother preparing her children to go on a trip. As she brings her two daughters outside, she discovers her husband and her 5-year-old son dead in the street, run over. Nearby, an eldery gentleman has also been struck and killed. Briscoe and Curtis respond and learn from the accidentent investigation unit that the driver apparently made no effort to slow down.

They talk to the young daughter in the family who says she saw a big black car moving quickly down the street (Pleasant Avenue in East Harlem). They talk to the widow of the gentleman, who IDs his body and says he had a silver-tipped walking stick and would like it back. There was no such stick at the scene, which means someone must have come along and taken it.

Profaci gets on the case of the missing cane, and leads Briscoe and Curtis to a squabbling pair of homeless guys, Mr Alternator Jones and Mr Rogers. Mr Jones, whose dad used to work at a Ford plant, hit Mr Rogers with a silver-tipped cane, which he says he found at the scene of the accident.

Meanwhile, forensics indicates that the victims were struck by a Jaguar, Merecedes, or BMW (based on the imprints found on the boy.) Curtis takes photos of these cars over to the victim's family (the Galvez's), and the daughter says the car was a Jaguar. While there, the dets go through condolence cards received by Mrs Galvez. Many of them have been sent anonymously and included cash. They find one card that mentions the boy's yellow boots: the boy was not wearing yellow boots at the hospital, however, which indicates that whoever sent this letter was at the scene of the accident. They trace the hundred dollar bills found in the envelope to a bank, and are able to then correlate the money to two customers who withdrew that much money. That leads them to Susan Young. They bring in Young under false pretenses, telling her that they found a credit card of hers that went missing months earlier. Once she's at the precinct, they present her with evidence about her involvement in the accident. She doesn't reveal her story, however, even when Curtis angrily confronts her. He shows her photos of the dead boy, and she throws up in a trash can.

They review the case with McCoy and Ross, and it's clear that McCoy is angry about the case as well. They look through Young's phone records, and determine that she was talking to someone in Rio de Janeiro every night for a week, and that she may have picked this person up at the airport on the night of the accident. They head to the airport, and a security guard says he remembers Young and the man she was with because the man was very drunk and belligerent. This leads them to their prime suspect: Bernard Dressler.

Van Buren, while cursing out a vending machine that stole her quarter, tells Briscoe and Curtis to solve the case quickly because the department is cutting her budget, a move she says is in response to her lawsuit (which alleges they passed over her for a promotion because she's black).

The detectives talk to Dressler at his office. He's a cocky bastard, but yields the keys to his car (a Jaguar) so the detectives so they can check it for forensic evidence. The car is clean, but a forensic automotive technician discovers that 3 of the 4 Vehicle Identification Number tags have been switched. He finds the fourth tag (secretly placed by the manufacturer) indicating that this is not the car that Dressler supposedly owns. They trace this car to an exotic car dealer, and find that Dressler's car had been detailed and repaired and was about to be exported to Russia. Under pressure, the car dealer admits he swapped cars with Dressler. Based on this, they arrest Dressler (21 mins) at a business meeting, where he gets upset and slightly resists arrest until Curtis slams his head into a desk.

The prosecutors determine they need a stronger witness to testify that Young and Dressler were seen together at the airport. (The security guard's ID is "soft.") They try to get the airline to turn over its passenger manifest from the flight, but they resists, arguing that the Warsaw Convention allows them not to. Schiff says that since they airline has offices in New York City, Ross should issue subpoenas and seize their furniture and computers until they comply.

The subpoenas are taken up by Judge Feldman, who we soon learn is planning to run against Schiff for the position of District Attorney. The airline is apparently afraid of complying with the subpoenas because evidence might lead to a lawsuit against it for serving too many drinks to Dressler. The judge decides in McCoy's favor, and then pulls he and Ross aside and tells them that he has an aggressive stance against drunk driving, and that he'll help McCoy in any way he can. This is improper, and Ross knows it. She tells McCoy they should report the incident to the defense, but he refuses.

Another passenger (and two off camera) tell Ross that Young and Dressler were together at the airport. They bring Young in again as a material witness and threaten to hold her in the Crypts, the cells below the courthouse, until she testifies about what she knows. She finally rolls on her abusive boyfriend, Dressler, and says that he also hit a girl in Masachusetts.

Schiff says he wants to make an example of Dressler, and wants to charge him with Murder I. McCoy agrees, but Ross argues they can't prove intent, especially since he was drunk. This is precisely what the defense argues when presented with the charge. Dressler says he lost count after his 12th drink. McCoy tracks down a flight attendant who served Dressler who says in a sworn statement that she served Dressler 15 drinks and he was so drunk he couldn't even fill out his customs statement. This establishes that Dressler was too drunk to form intent, and so therefore cannot be charges with Murder I.

What happens next is what leads to all the difficulties with the disciplinary committee later on: McCoy tells the airline's lawyer that since the flight attendant is a citizen of Columbia, she cannot be compelled to testify if she does not return to the United States. The lawyer silently acknowledges what McCoy is doing: he's helping the airline (she can't testify in a civil suit) and he's helping his own case (she can't testify he was too drunk to form intent.) Ross gets very angry and tells McCoy he could be disbarred for such behavior. He says, "That's up to you," meaning that will only happen if she testifies against him or tells someone. She says the attendant's statement is "exculpatory" and should be turned over.

At trial (41 mins), the defense repeatedly tries to establish that Dressler was drunk at the time of the accident, but McCoy objects every time they do, and Judge Feldman sustains him. During a break in the trial, Ross talks to Briscoe about McCoy's motivations for being so aggressive on the case: she knows that McCoy is upset about her predecessor (and Jack's lover) Claire Kincaid being killed by a drunk driver, and she thinks that incident is affecting his judgment here. Briscoe says that McCoy hasn't said, "This one's for Claire Kincaid." He also says he's is upset that Claire's killer only got "12 months at Mount Macgregor," which we are led to believe represents a not-very-harsh sentence. Briscoe also retells the story of the accident to Ross, familiar to anyone who has seen the episode titled Aftershock.

Back at trial, Susan Young testifies against her boyfriend. The defense wants to make a deal for Man I, but McCoy refuses, even though both Ross and Schiff tell him it makes sense to accept the deal. Ross even goes so far as to accuse McCoy (and Feldman) of "legal murder," since he is suppressing the flight attendant's statement. Ross and McCoy have a rather heated argument, during which she raises the specter of Claire Kincaid by saying McCoy wants Dressler to get more than 12 months at Mount Macgregor. He tells her she doesn't know what she talking about, and he yells at her, saying she's so used to being a defense attorney she's forgotten what she's doing in the prosecutor's office. She retorts that he is the one who has forgotten what he's doing there. (Meaning that he's so bent on pursuing vengeance/justice that he's ignoring the law.)

Back at trial, Dressler takes the stand, and he's doing miserably, but insists he doesn't remember anything. Finally, as McCoy confronts him with pictures of the victims, he begins to break down, and actually asks McCoy (not the jury) to forgive him. This causes a change in McCoy's body language and after some hesitation, he does something which sends his whole case down the crapper: he introduces the flight attendant's statement. Judge Feldman demands to see everyone in chambers, and is angry with McCoy for changing tactics and destroying his own case, which Feldman had hopes to use to promote his own "tough on crime" reputation. He allows the statement into evidence, but then cryptically asks McCoy if he is familiar with the provisions of Title L. McCoy explains to Ross that Title L is what they now call sections 195, and 195.05 of the criminal code, the part that governs official misconduct. It's clear that Feldman has just threatened McCoy.

Back in the courtroom, McCoy reads from the flight attendant's statement, and this lets the defendant off the hook for Murder I. Why he doesn't just pursue the case as he was and negotiate a plea arrangement with Dressler is a mystery to me, but nonetheless, he now proposes a deal with Dressler: Vehicular Manslaughter I, with a sentence of 5-15 years.

Judge Feldman must approve of the deal, which he initially resists, and tells McCoy he's going to report him to the ethics committee, but McCoy responds by saying Feldman, too, has acted improperly, and he did so in front of Ross. Feldman relents, and accepts the plea. At the entry of the plea, Dressler apologizes, and Feldman issues a big speech about how the sentencing guidelines are insufficient to express his outrage, etc., etc.

This gets his picture in the paper next to a big headline touting a maximum sentence. Schiff looks at the paper and decides it's time to hire a campaign manager. Ross invites McCoy to come to dinner with David (her boyfriend), but McCoy replies "three's a crowd," but promises to meet her for dessert. It seems he wants to spend some alone time thinking about Claire.

The episode is notable because of it contains the incident which leads to McCoy facing the ethics committee (in Jamie Ross's final episode), and because it sets up the Feldman story arc in which he challenges Schiff. It's also notable because we see Curtis's wife and kids in an early scene, and we see his wife walking using crutches because of her MS.

The episode is another chapter in the tense relationship between McCoy and Ross. She's arguably the strongest-willed of all the ADAs, and in this episode and many others she makes her opinions known. This often leads to heated arguments with McCoy, and given his relationship with Claire, her predecessor, it's no mystery why they don't get along all the time. At the end of the ep, Ross tries to show her forgiveness of Jack by inviting him to dinner and patting him on the shoulder, but ultimately, she does go on to testify against him at his disciplinary hearing.

The title of the episode seems to refer both to Dressler's condition at the time of the accident, and to the way McCoy is operating "under the influence" of Kincaid's death.

ps. This is the 200th episode of the original series I have summarized for this website.

Posted by adm at May 27, 2004 01:40 AM

Comments

Post a comment

validate