The Ledger

13.10 Mother's Day

Elisabeth Rohm takes her bad acting skills to a new low in this preposterous episode (13.10) in which a mother kills her son who had killed another girl by running her over in her car. All of this gets even more ridiculous when the woman's defense attorney turns out to be both a former law school classmate of Southerlyn's and the -- gasp! -- niece of the defendant. Briscoe and Green investigate, while McCoy tries to build a prosecution and stave off Southerlyn's lack of talent at the same time.

The episode begins at a diner where a blonde college-aged girl sits down and talks to the folksy counter man, ordering a coffee and reading a chemistry text book. She gets a phone call and leaves. Moments later, there are screeches and screams, and she's been run over. The victim is Emily Milius, aged 17, and she's been run over by a Saturn. She's in Washington Heights (the neighborhood north of Harlem), but she goes to a private school in a different neighborhood.

Milius's panicky mom identifies her, and so they continue their investigation at her school. Her droll friend Blair says that Milius did Ecstasy ("X"), and other friends reveal she had a friend named Todd Block. They talk to the victim's rich parents, and her dad, apparently some kind of big shot CFO of a pharmaceutical company, reveals druing a private conversation in the park that he is a whistleblower at his company and was afraid for the safety of himself and his family.

The Saturn is found, and Borak gives some good forensic information on the car. They track the owner down to a Mrs Payton, who says her son Danny had the car. They visit Danny and find him dead in bed, in a cold room. Was Danny hired to make this hit or what?

They talk to Danny's mom again. They learn he had a job at a gas station, and that he did drugs. ME Rodgers examines Danny's bodie and says he was stabbed to death, but his tox screen came out negative. The stab wounds had hesitation marks. Van Buren talks to Emily's mom down at the precinct, and as they're talking she sees Danny's mom who has been brought into custody. (In case you're wondering, this moment is handled about 1000 times less effectively than a similar moment was treated in an episode of Homicide: Life on the Streets that was filmed about 10 years earlier.)

Anyway, it's beginning to look like Danny's mom killed Danny. They question her aggressively, with Briscoe and Van Buren good-cop/bad-copping her until she gives it up and confesses, though without being Mirandized. (27')

She retains defense counsel Kay Hartley, who shows up late for court and not formally dressed, daying it was casual day at Whitman Worth, her firm. It is revealed that Harley knows Serena Southerlyn from Law School. Southerlyn says that Hartley was a snob, which sounds like the pot calling the kettle black to me. What Hartley is doing defending this person is beyond me, anwyay, since she's not a criminal attorney and she's handling a murder case, but that is partially explained later, I guess. Anyway, you know Hartley is going to move to suppress the confession, since her client wasn't Mirandized.

Hartley and Southerlyn meet in Central Park. Hartley says that Danny's mom, Mrs Payton, is mentally ill. Then Hartley reveals that Danny's dad is her uncle, so her client is her aunt! Hartley asks Southerlyn to obtain Payton's medical records. She wants to get Payton declared crazy, but Payton doesn't want that to happen. So Hartley pretends to repesent her aunt in a hearing to determine whether Payton can act as her own guardian. It is a scene of total bullshit.

A doctor tells them that Danny was schizophrenic, but not abusive. Hartley argues that -- listen to this -- Payton killed Danny as a "defense of a 3rd party" because she knew that Danny would kill again. Well, the only reason she was able to get this defense in is that Southerlyn screwed up in fighting for those records. In other words, Serena got played. They have a big cat fight about it, and Hartley reveals that this case is going to make her a partner at her firm. (A pro bono case of a low-class, low-profile murderer makes you a partner at a corporate firm?? Give me a break.)

Anyway, at trial (42), Van Buren testifies about the circumstances of the interrogation, which is pretty rare for the show. Hartley suggests that Danny was responsible for several other unsolved cases, including some guy who got kicked to death. Branch tells SS to make a deal, but SS and McCoy keep trying to prosecute the case. McCoy concludes that Danny has killed at least two other people, which means he accepts the notion that Danny kicked that guy to death, even though there is no evidence to suggest that he actually did. This is nonsense.

Surprise! Southerlyn learns that Hartley lied to her yet again. She had said Danny stole the keys to the Saturn, when in fact he didn't. Also, Hartley didn't tells Mrs Payton about the plea offer. In his closing, McCoy mentions his own child, and the verdict comes back guilty.

This episode is such a pile of crap it's not even worth discussing. Every time you see the creators of the show talk about how realistic the show is, think back to this episode and scoff.

Posted by adm at July 1, 2004 04:17 AM

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