The Ledger

12.22 Attorney Client

In this episode (12.22), the wife of a well-off defense attorney is murdered in her Jaguar, and either some former clients or the attorney himself is to blame. Briscoe and Green investigate, and McCoy and Southerlyn figure out how to prosecute a defense attorney.

The episode begins with a couple walking down the street. They are just leaving the woman's 40th birthday, and are having a discussion about the nature of time when they hear shots ring out. Briscoe and Green respond to the scene, and find the victim, Marjorie Jensen, dead from 3 gunshots, and the hood ornament of her Jaguar is missing.

They talk to her husband, Harold, a defense attorney. He is pre-occupied with his current case, and tells the detectives he needs to get back to work on it. Forensics doesn't reveal much: the gun used was a .22, but there are no prints on the car. The dets check out the case that Jensen is working on, but there doesn't seem to be a connection. They check out Jensen at the NY bar association's disciplinary committee, where they learn of one former client, Mr. Griggs, who filed many angry complaints against Jensen.

They learn that Griggs has been recently paroled, and was supposed to be at an AA meeting the night of the murder, but he missed it. They go to Griggs apartment, where they find him drinking. They take him in to custody (13 mins). He says he missed the meeting because he received a call telling him his friend wasn't doing well, and he should go visit him. However, they address he was given to meet his friend was an abandoned building. But he says he stopped in a bodega to pick up cigarettes, and his face should be on the security tape. So he has an alibi. It looks a little bit like Griggs may have been set up, since it was part of his previous MO to use a .22 and steal hood ornaments.

They talk to the doorman at the Jensen's building who tells them that the Jensens' marriage was sometimes rocky, and he recently heard Mrs Jensen tell a cab driver to take her to a dive bar on 119th Street, not her usual habitat. They check out the bar, and the bartended says he remembers her, and that she met with a younger, sleazy guy.

They check out the Jensens' financial records and find evidence of lots of jewelry purchases and a trip to Las Vegas. However, it seems these were not for Mrs Jensen. They suspect an affair, and learn that Jensen had a mistress, a stripper and former hooker named Jasmine.

They track down Jasmine, who tells them the affair lasted 6 months but then Jensen broke it off because he was afraid of Jasmine's ex-boyfriend, Bobby Caldwell, who threatened him.

The detectives track down Caldwell at a sleazy motel (wth special "One Hour Nap" rates), and when they see him, he runs. Ed Green chases him down in an Ed Green 5-Second Foot Chase™ and they take him into custody. Bobby admits taking photos of Jensen and Jasmine and selling them to Mrs Jensen. That's why they were at the dive bar together.

Southerlyn visits Jasmine at her strip club to get more info. When she arrives, the club manager things SS is applying to be a stripper. Instead, she gets contact information for Jasmine's friend and former roommate, and visits her at her day job. The friend reveals that Jasmine and Bobby were conning Jensen -- taking all the money he gave her, while pretending that things had ended. McCoy and SS theorize that the murder was a conspiracy between Bobby and Jasmine. They are arrested (off camera, 29 mins) and McCoy meets with them at Rikers, where he offers them a deal -- one of them gets 15 years instead of life in exchange for testimony against the other one. Their lawyers say that McCoy can't use a conspiracy charge to prove the murder, because he doesn't have any evidence of a conspiracy. One of the lawyer's describe it as a "defense lawyer's dream." A reaction shot of Southerlyn makes us think that perhaps the other defense lawyer in this episode -- Jensen -- was somehow involved in cooking up this scheme.

They decide to reinvestigate Jansen. SS visits his secretary, and learns that Jensen frequently checked on Griggs' impending release date. He said it was so he could ensure his own safety, but we suspect he may have actually been waiting for a convenient time to frame Griggs. McCoy and SS develop a new theory of the crime -- that Griggs framed everyone else for the murder of his wife -- and the detectives arrest him at work (34 mins).

Jensen's trial begins (38 mins), and it's a real circus. A former client of Jensen's testifies that he provided a .22 gun to him, and Jasmine testifies that she was involved in a conspiracy with Jensen to kill his wife. (A lot of her testimony is "He said...", and I'm not sure why it's not hearsay. Maybe because she is a co-conspirator?) Things get strange, however, when Jensen takes the stand on his own behalf. He spends most of his testimony talking directly to the jurors, talking about how he takes responsibility for the affair, but how he is the victim of malicious prosecution. But when McCoy cross-examines him, Jensen is unable to say the date that he ended the affair with Jasmine. McCoy reveals he has photos of Jasmine and Jensen together, and suggests that these photos depict a date-specific item that would directly contradict whatever Jensen might say. Jensen freezes and refuses to answer.

Jensen decides to fire his attorney, Ms. Swan, and tells the judge he wants to represent himself, even though they're halfway through the trial. The judge allows it, and even allows Jensen to offer a "re-direct" examination of...himself. So Jensen gets back on the stand and gives the jury more nonsense about why he lied about the end of the affair and so on. Immediately after this, he tries to call McCoy to the stand! McCoy objects, saying he'd have to withdraw as the prosecutor of the case he testifies, and this would lead to a mistrial. The judge refuses Jensen's gambit, and McCoy and Jensen make their closing statements. Jensen tries to argue that McCoy maliciously prosecuted him, but McCoy says that the prosecution took the unusual path that it did because of Jensen's own efforts to frame everyone. Jensen is found guilty of Murder 2, but it's not over yet.

He calls a meeting with McCoy and offers to sell out all of his former clients in exchange for leniency. McCoy seems somewhat willing to consider this, but he talks it over with SS and Lewin, and tells Jensen he's decided to refuse the offer. Jensen says it doesn't matter: he has good grounds for appeal. He says that it was within his rights to call McCoy and that the judge's refusal to allow it is appeal-worthy. He tells McCoy that the smart thing for McCoy to have done would have been to step aside, but McC's competitive spirit wouldn't allow it. The episode ends.

This is a pretty simple episode, that only gets complicated and unusual near then end of the trial. I think the script writers intended it to be about the "gamesmanship" between defense attorneys and prosecutors, but that part doesn't really work very well, in part because of the preposterous nature of parts of the script, and also because of the somewhat uneven performance of Peter Friedman as Jensen. His performance varies in tone, and he has an element of weakness in persona that doesn't seem fitting for someone trying to go head to head with McCoy. Friedman should have played his character much more confidently, rather than try to make up for it with loud tantrums and so forth.

The episode's title refers to Jensen's framing of his clients, his proposed violation of attorney client privilege at the end of the episode, and, I suppose, to his status as both an attorney and a client.

Posted by adm at June 2, 2004 02:25 AM

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