The Ledger

6.14 Custody: The Return of Paul Robinette

In this episode (6.14), former Assistant District Attorney Paul Robinette returns to defend a former crack addict accused of kidnapping the baby she lost to foster care, and killing a social worker in the process. Curtis and Briscoe investigate, while McCoy and Kincaid take on Robinette.

The episode begins at the murder scene, where Curtis and Briscoe have already arrived. A uniformed officers tells them that a film crew shooting a video discovered the body of Lawrence Bellow in a playground. Nearby, they find his briefcase and a contractor-grade screwdriver that was apparently used to open the briefcase. They learn that Bellow was a social worker who placed kids into foster care.

From the contents of his briefcase, they begin to suspect he has a gambling problem. They talk to his wife and co-workers who deny it, though not very convincingly. From his co-worker, they also learn that one of his clients, the Pattersons, had been giving him a hard time about something. They go to the Pattersons home and after asking some questions suspect that Patterson has a scam going where he is getting paid for housing foster kids that don't exist. Eventually, the Pattersons admit to the scam, and say that it was Bellow's idea, and that it was netting them $800/month. They book the Pattersons on fraud charges.

They check out other families that Bellow had recently reviewed, and learn about the Corbin family -- their file showed no activity for 18 months and then all of a sudden Bellow re-opened it. The detectives visit the Corbins, and when they arrive another detective, Sal, is already there: the Corbins' foster son Alex has been kidnapped! He disappeared from the zoo on the same day as the murder. Quite a coincidence.

They work with Sal on the kidnapping case, and have a bit of a squabble in front of Van Buren about who is in charge of the investigation. Van Buren helps them settle their differences. They learn from the parents that Alex was a crack baby, and that Alex is black. (The Corbins are white, a fact which becomes crucial later on.) Curtis offers his theory on the case -- the biological father of the boy was somehow involved -- and Sal calls him "Wonder Boy" for his powers of deductive reasoning.

Curtis and Briscoe visit the same social worker database guy who gave them the previous information about Bellow's cases, and pressure him hard to give them info about Alex's biological mother. Curtis is aggressive, but Briscoe has a softer touch. The guy tells them that since his mother was addicted to crack, she would have been referred to one of 6 rehab clinics. They visit one clinic where an administrator (improbably) remembers the mom because of the baby photo of Alex. (She says she remembers his birthmark.) She refers them to Mt. Sinai hospital, where the mom went when she caught pneumonia. She identifies the mother as Jenny Mays.

They track down Mays' last address and learn that her boyfriend is an electrician (and so would have the kind of screwdriver found at the crime scene). They track down the boyfriend, Michael Walters, who tries to run but is quickly caught and thrown against his van. In interrogation, he seems like he's in over his head, but doesn't give up any useful information until the police suggest they'll pass on a recommendation for Man 2 to the DAs office. He admits that Mays and the baby are probably at his sister's house.

The raid the sister's apartment, but just miss Mays. She's taken a cab to the Port Authority bus terminal. They hold the buses heading towards Springfield, MA, where she has family, and search the bus, where they find Mays and her son Alex, whom she calls "Jamal." (25 mins)

McCoy, Kincaid, and Robinette meet to discuss the case. Paul wants a deal for a much lesser charge than kidnapping: custodial interference, no jail time. McCoy refuses, because he is suspicious of Mays' story that she decided to kidnap Alex on an impulse when she saw him on the street. He believes the act was premeditated, which makes it a felony, which makes the murder felony murder.

Kincaid visits Mays' place of work where she deduces that Mays was planning to move to Springfield, which again is evidence of pre-meditation. They further learn that Bellow attempted to sell the Corbins address to Mays for $1000, but then upped the price to $2000 at the last minute. Mays told her boyfriend to scare Bellows and get the address, no matter what it took.

Robinette files a motion to dismiss the case against his client, but its denied. Immediately thereafter, he moves for the judge to recuse himself from the case. He says that the judge once told him and Ben Stone that he favored sterilization for drug addicts, and this makes him biased against Mays. The judge at first is shocked, but then agrees to withdraw after Robinette says he can get Ben Stone to testify to the matter as well. McCoy congratulates Robinette on "bullying a judge," but Robinette turns it around and tells McCoy he's the one with 500 lawyers, a huge budget, and an armed police force at his disposal. He says to McCoy, "You're the biggest bad ass on the block." Back at the office, Schiff tells McCoy that Stone is travelling in Europe and unable to testify, which Paul knew. Good bluff, Paul.

At trial (38 mins), Robinette makes it clear in his opening statement that he's not really going to make the case about his client's guilt or innocence. Instead, he's going to assert that New York State is the one who is guilty of kidnapping, because it takes black children away from their mothers and places them with white families, which rob them of their racial identity. He says that transracial adoptions amount to "cultural genocide." It's clear from this strong language that Robinette's character has changed over the years, a fact which both he and McCoy allude to later on. In my opinion, it represents too dramatic a change for Robinette, who always had a equanimical attitude about race when he was a character on the show.

In any case, the trial continues with competing testimony from Alex's new white mom, who testifies about all the progress he's made since joining their family, and an expert who testifies that transracial adoption results in under-performing adults. (McCoy retorts that in the case of Alex, if he ends up an under-achiever it could be because he was born addicted to crack and was neglected for the first 18 months of his life.)

Back at the office, the prosecutors talk about their next steps. McCoy says that something has changed in Paul since the old days. Schiff tells him to make a deal. Kincaid talks to Robinette at a bar about the possibility, but he refuses, and they have a conversation about race. She says he's offering a political stance, not a defense, and that not everything is about race. He disagrees, and says "Everything is about race." No deal.

Back at trial, McCoy asks Mays whether she would have wanted her son back even if the Corbins were black. She says yes, which seems to poke a hole in her case.

Nonetheless, it's not enough, and after deliberating for 3 days, the jury reports it cannot reach a verdict. They want to convict on the murder without convicting on the kidnapping, but that's not allowable because of the way the charges are structured. The judge declares a mistrial.

McCoy and Robinette meet outside the courtroom and agree that the jury sent them both a message. Also, McCoy asks Robinette about the way he's changed, and he reminds us of what Ben Stone once said to him: "He said I'd have to decide whether I was a lawyer who was black or a black man who was a lawyer. I thought it was the former. I was wrong."

Posted by adm at May 28, 2004 12:22 AM

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