The Ledger

2.15 Trust

In this episode (2.15), a teenager shoots a friend while the two of them are playing with a gun. Investigation shows that he was involved in a similar shooting a couple of years earlier. Cerreta and Logan investigate, and Stone and Robinette prosecute -- twice.

The episode begins with a couple of cops patrolling in a car by a pier. They see some kids running through an abandoned warehouse and go in to investigate. They find the kids, and also find the body of a 15-year-old boy, Robby Fenwick. The kids say they heard there was a body there, so they just went to check it out. They also find a .357 revolver nearby.

The detectives talk to the ballistics lady and trace the gun to Ian Mazer, a middle-aged guy who insists he's the only one with access to the gun. He has a son named Jamie, though. When they visit Jamie in his room, it's immediately evidence that he was involved in the shooting.

They bring him in for questioning, and he tells them they were fooling around, and he was holding the gun waist-high when Robby reached for it and it went off, killing him. But when the detectives attempt to recreate the shooting at the scene, they determine that due to the nature of the boys injuries, Robby must have been standing too far away to be reaching for the gun. Instead, he was covering his face with his hands, and the gun must have been aimed right at him from eye-level.

They question Jamie again, and he says he and Robby were playing a game called "Trust" in which the other person comes close to shooting you, but you have to trust him not to. He says he didn't know the gun was going to fire, because he thought you had to cock the hammer before pulling the trigger, and he hadn't done that. This kind of weapon is called "single-action," (as opposed to double-action weapons, which cock the hammer and fire when you pull the trigger). This becomes a crucial claim later on.

They talk to an official at Jamie's school, Bishop Academy, who says Jamie was a bit of a loner and was on some kind of psychiatric drug. Kids at the school says Robby was very much into guns, and he and Jamie got along.

They talk to Robby's dad, briefly, and then to Jamie's dad, again, who says he can't discuss the nature of Jamie's psych condition because it's sealed as part of his divorce agreement. They talk to the ex-wife, and she says the same thing. They do learn, however, that Jamie was involved in some kind of other criminal incident a few years earlier, but the record of that is also sealed.

Because they can't unseal the records, they go talk to the arresting officer, who kept his own notes on the incident. He says that Jamie and another boy, Graham Campbell, were playing with a gun, and Graham was shot and killed. Sound familiar? Jamie even offered the same excuse about not knowing the gun was double-action.

The dets talk it over with the ADAs. Stone wants to prosecute for Murder 2. They arrest Jamie (28') and arraign him with Judge Doremus. His lawyer, Mr Barnett, tells Stone that Jamie was "involuntarily intoxicated" by the psychiatric drug ("Trachon"?) he was taking, and so is not criminally responsible for the murder.

Jamie talks to Olivet, who determines he is the victim of an abusive, domineering father. He plays the games with the guns because he wants to feel powerful.

Schiff tells Stone to either get the records on the first shooting unsealed or to make a deal. Stone goes to trial (Judge Markman presides) after an unsuccessful bid to unseal the records, and after much testimony, Jamie is found not guilty of Murder 2 by reason of mental defect.

Stone tells Robinette to get the records of the first shooting unsealed so they can reopen the investigation. The detectives do a walk-through of that scene, and talk to the manager of a gun range who saw Jamie's father teaching him to use a double-action gun before either shooting. This would seem to invalidate Jamie's defense that he didn't know what he was doing.

They also need the mother to testify about what she knows, namely that Jamie once threatened her with a gun, too.

With all this, they go to trial, and the father testifies and freaks out a little on the stand. The jury finds Jamie guilty of Murder 2. He's carried off to Spofford.

One thing I don't understand is how the mother managed to lose custody of Jamie in the first place. If the father was abusive at the time of their divorce, how on earth could the father end up with custody rights? This is not properly explained in the episode.

Posted by adm at October 22, 2004 05:15 AM

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