The Ledger

1.11 Out of the Half-Light: Best Episode Ever?

In this amazingly well-written episode (1.11), Logan and Greevey investigate the apparent abduction, rape, and assault of a young black woman, but their efforts are hindered by a leading black politician who says he is trying to protect her rights. Stone and Robinette must confront, and then work around, the politician to uncover the truth.

The episode closely mirrors the famous case of Tawana Brawley, whose interests were represented by Al Sharpton during the controversy following her allegations that she was raped by a group of men, including a white cop.

Plot Summary

The episode begins in the parking lot of a housing project, where a few passers-by move on, and an older woman walking her dog discovers a young woman, Astria Crawford, under a pile of garbage, twitching, with epithets written on her skin. Greevey and Logan visit her at the hospital, where Astria is reluctant to open her eyes, and can't really speak. Eventually Logan gets her to open her eyes and interact with them. He gently asks her who did this to her, and she writes on his notepad: "White cops."

They talk to Astria's mother, who tells them Astria was dating a boy named Jordon Hill. The detectives track down Hill via a girlfriend of Astria named Fiona Hardison. Hill doesn't have much useful information, though he was the last known person to have seen her before she disappeared. In the meantime, Astria's family takes on an advisor, Ronald Eaton, a black Congressman from New York. The dets try to talk to Astria's parents, but they are upset that white police officers are investigating the crime, and they don't want to talk. Eaton demands that a photo lineup featuring all white police officers working on the Upper West Side be arranged so Astria can pick out her attackers. Logan and Greevey, lacking evidence, and the ability to talk directly to Astria, are starting become a bit sceptical about her story, but Logan eventually tells Greevey and Kragen that he feels Astria is being treated like a suspect, even though she's a victim. Kragen reveals that he's known Eaton since the time of Martin Luther King's assassination when Eaton (then known as Uhuru Eaton) occupied some buildings and demanded buses so that poor New Yorkers could attend MLK's funeral.

Logan and Greevey visit the alleged crime scene trying to find evidence, but they don't really come up with much. (While they're there, Logan mentions he's dating an NYU film student, and watched the Chaplin film Modern Times with her the previous night.)

Eaton, trying to protect the girl from charges that her story is a hoax, declares that an old church is a "sanctuary" and that she cannot be pursude there. He gives a passionate speech on the steps, to an assembled crowd of locals and journalists. He also says he has the names of the cops that committed the attack on Astria. Kragen arrives with Stone and the detectives at the scene and wants to send the dets in to talk to Astria. Stone twice tells Kragen he's making a big mistake, but Kragen is insistent and Greevey and Logan walk through the assembled journalists, declaring they are just there to talk to Astria, not remove her. They enter the church, where they find Astria and her parents. Eaton enters soon afterwards. Logan and Eaton get into a bit of an argument of racial issues and the system, and Astria gets increasingly emotional, eventually collapsing or throwing herself on the ground. She is taken away in an ambulance. Good move, Kragen.

Back at the office, Kragen and Stone get in an argument with raised voices, one of the louder arguments I've seen on the show. Stone, fed up with the NYPD's botched investigation, removes their authority to investigate and says, "This is no longer a police matter." That leaves it to Stone and Paul Robinette to figure out what really happened.

Stone tells Robinette that they have to disapprove a police cover-up of the alleged attack. Stone and Eaton meet at the hospital where Astria is staying to talk things over, but Eaton refuses to allow Stone and his investigators access to Astria. (This is ironic/hypocritical, because at this point, by not allowing access to the girl, it's Eaton, not Stone, who is responsible for the cover-up.) Eaton tells Stone what we've guessed all along: his interest in the case is not merely focused on the individual case. He wants to put the system on trial, and expose the biases in the NYC criminal justice enterprise. He tells Stone that he wants everyone's head on a platter, including Kragen's, the police commissioner's, and Stone's. Undeterred by this threat, Stone encounters the press in the hospital (apparently) and after a statement by Eaton, begins to assert publicly for the first time that Astria's story may be a hoax.

To prove this charge, Stone wants to set up a grand jury. Schiff agrees, but is cautious. As he continues to investigate, Stone finds that Astria's boyfriend, Hill, is now denying that he saw Astria during the period of time she was missing. It seems like Eaton has gotten to him and told him to change his story, but he won't admit it.

The grand jury proceeding (41 mins) takes place, but Stone still struggles to learn the truth. Astria's rape counselor (who has been a prominent figure throughout the episode) testifies that according to the usual indicators, it seems like Astria's story is a false allegation. Eaton then testifies about putting the system on trial. Stone threatens to charge him with obstruction of justice and Eaton walks off the stand (a move echoed by Jack McCoy years later, by the way). After some discussion, a judge places Astria and her mother in contempt of court for refusing to testify. The judge reluctantly gives permission to Eaton to make a statement after the decision, and he starts to accuse her, a black woman, of selling out and being complicit in the cover-up. In a fantastic scene, she cuts him off and tears him a new one. Then she turns her attention to Astria and her family and tells them that they have received terrible counsel from their attorney and Eaton.

At this point, Robinette essentially takes ownership of the case and the episode. Making some progress, but not much, Robinette resolves to get to the bottom of things, and the only way he can is to get someone to talk. He seeks out a black priest who is apparently an old friend and asks him to serve as an intermediary between him and Eaton. Seeing how corrupt and politicized everything has become, Robinette muses to the priest that he turned down a high-paying position on Wall Street to make a difference, and this is what has become of it.

In any case, talking to the priest works. It just so happens that Mrs. Crawford is one of his parishioners, and he arranges for her to meet with Robinette semi-secretly, out on the street. When she meets Robinette, she has a black eye, apparently given to her by her ill-tempered husband, Astria's father, and Robinette finally gets what appears to be the truth: She tells Robinette that Astria became pregnant with Hill's baby, and her father was demanding that she have the baby, because she is Catholic. According to Mrs. Crawford, Astria figured that if she told her parents she was raped, her parents would allow her to get an abortion.

Robinette begins to wrap things up: he confronts Mr. Crawford and threatens him with charges if there is any further violence directed toward Astria or her mom. Next, in perhaps the best scene in the show, Robinette confronts Eaton at a meeting in an empty diner. Robinette apparently threatened Eaton with charges, and Eaton retorts, "If what you're telling me is true, you might be the most simple-hearted , down-the-river n***er to ever wear a tie." But Robinette doesn't fold, telling Eaton the Astria's story is a hoax and he should let it go. Eaton asks, "Does it make a difference" whether the story is true or not, and again accuses Robinette of being complicit in a corrupt system. Robinette replies that "at times the system stinks, but don't tell me for a minute that your self-aggrandizing polarization is going solve the problem." Eaton says Robinette is casting his vote for order over justice, and that he's choosing a negative piece over positive piece, a phrase he borrows from MLK. Robinette responds sharply, in the ep's finest moment, "King walked with angels...You slide and slime on your belly to get what you want." Eaton puts on his sunglasses (even though it's night), and that ends their conversation.

Stone tells Schiff he's dropped the cross-complaint against Eaton and Astria, which Schiff is disappointed about, but as they leave, Stone tells Robinette that Schiff will eventually decide it was the right thing to do. "He'll probably love it in the morning," he says.

Out on the street, Stone asks Robinette, "Do you think of yourself as a black lawyer or a lawyer's who's black?" Robinette immediately replies, brilliantly, "It depends on the context." (Robinette references this in a later episode, I think in his last episode at the end of Season 2.) Robinette and Stone start walking down the street together, and then the camera follows Robinette as a distance as he walks off on his own.

Analysis

Coming soon.

In the meantime, here is an extensive amount of information on the Tawana Brawley case. I will discuss the many similarities between the Brawley case and this episode some day.

14.21 Vendetta

Giancarlo Esposito guest-stars in this well-written and richly plotted episode (14.21) in which a baseball fan who accidentally caused a local baseball team to lose a chance to get to the World Series is beaten to death in a bar by a man wielding a whiskey bottle. Briscoe and Green investigate, and McCoy and Southerlyn find that proving guilt is more complicated than they initially suspect.

Plot Summary

The episode begins with a discussion amongst a group of friends in a bar that is interrupted by a fight in another area of the bar. They rush over, and find the victim, dead and bloody. His killer has fled the scene. Briscoe and Green show up, and all the witnesses describe the assailant as normal, average, etc. A few say that the victim looks familiar, though -- they just can't place his face. They check his wallet and learn his name: Brendan Donner. Briscoe and Green immediately recognize his name: he's a fan that caught a baseball that was still in play, causing the (unnamed) team to miss its chance at the Series. They recall that everyone in NY was enraged with this fan.

The dets visit his wife, who reveals just how deep that hatred ran and how it affected her husband. They recently separated because he didn't want to involve her in his ordeal any longer. They search his new apartment and find an FBI agent's business card. They visit agent Jeffrey Bauerman and learn that Donner received numerous death threats, boxes of hate mail, and a letter containing a white powdery substance. (Hence the involvement of the FBI.) As a favor to Donner, the FBI agent tapped his phone so they record any incoming threats. (The agent reveals that he wagered against the hometown team, so to him Donner was a hero.) The dets go through the phone taps and listen to a call in which someone threatens to beat him to death. They visit this person, who turns out to be innocent, and learn of a website devoted to making Donner's life hell: GetDonner.com. They check out the site. (The show's staff exerted a bit of effort to make a convincing site -- they show a message board and everything.) They learn that the site had a section that kept track of Donner spottings around the city.

None of this matters, however, because forensics was able to lift a print from the murder weapon (the bottle) after painstakingly reconstructing the bottle (by buying a bottle of the same brand, filling it with plaster, breaking it, and then placing the shards from the murder weapon around it). The prints on the bottle match Walter Grimes, a convict released from prison three months earlier. He left prison because he was exonerated of the crime he was initially convicted of: the stabbing death of a girl named Testa. The DNA on the knife supposedly used in the murder did not match Testa, so he was freed. They further learn that the lawyer who helped exonerate Testa is Rodney Fallon (perfectly played by Esposito), who leads the New York Exoneration Project, which, as the name implies, seeks to use DNA evidence to prove certain convicts are innocent. (This seems related to the Barry Scheck/Northwestern University Innocence Project.) The detectives visit Fallon who is uncooperative, even though they have a warrant for Grimes' arrest. Eventually, Fallon gives the dets Grimes' home address. They arrive with the superintendent, and Briscoe pretends he hears a "plaintive cry for help" and commands the super to let them in. They enter, but do not find Grimes. In a bit of ridiculousness, Briscoe goes to a giant copy of the Yellow Pages and says an old private detective's trick is to drop the phone book spine-first on a table, and whatever page it opens to is the page the owner last looked at. He does this, it opens up to a page full of hotels. Based on this, they apparently spend the next 6 hours visiting all the hotels on that page, and end up at a motel where the clerk recognizes Grimes from the picture. He says he checked out, saying he was headed for Providence.

They confront Fallon, who they believe knew where Grimes was and purposely misled them. He makes a deal with Van Buren to find Grimes and bring him in peacefully. Rather than wait for that to happen, they trail Fallon and wait for him to exit with Grimes. After 45 minutes and no word from Fallon, they enter the motel room, and find Fallon, tied up in the closet. Grimes has fled. Thankfully, what happens next is not as improbable as the phone book incident and is staged much more satisfyingly: The dets head down to the bus terminal, where they spot Grimes boarding a bus. Briscoe motions to Green to approach from behind, and he walks towards Grimes with a few uniformed cops behind him. Grimes sees him coming, and turns to walk away. Briscoe shouts at him to stop, but Grimes grabs a female passer-by and puts her in a sort of headlock, indicating he'll break her neck if they come any closer. Thankfully, their tactical method works, and Green (whom we see sneaking up from behind) steps up at exactly the right moment and puts his gun to Grimes head. Grimes releases the woman and surrenders (24 mins) saying, "I'm not going back. I can't go back there."

McCoy and Southerlyn meet with Grimes and Fallon, who for some reason is still his attorney, even though he was tied up by him earlier. Can you see the defense strategy coming? Yeah, me too: Fallon says that prison changed his client so that he no longer has a sense of right and wrong and cannot form criminal intent. Southerlyn asks, "So prison made him do it?" Apparently.

Our old friend Elizabeth Olivet examines Grimes to see whether he really is as insane as Fallon suggests. (Olivet looks pretty old but good.) Olivet has a testy interview with Grimes, during which Grimes says he attacked Donner not because of the foul ball but because "he laid hands on me." Olivet determines that he is not insane, but she can foresee Fallon's experts testifying otherwise. Fallon represents his defense strategy to McCoy, who is a little worried.

He and Southerlyn set out to prove that Grimes was criminal-minded before he ever went to prison for the Testa killing. Since he was never convicted of any other crimes, they try to get his juvenile record opened, which a judge allows. They learn that when he was a teenager, Grimes was arrested for a liquor store robbery, but was turned loose by the arresting officer. They talk to the store owner who says he remembers the robber was Hispanic, not white like Grimes. They visit Officer Daniels, the arresting officer (who is now a detective with whom Green once worked). Daniels says Grimes did it, regardless of what the victim said.

Meanwhile, they learn that the blood on the knife didn't match the Testa girl, but it does match another young murder victim named Julie Sayer. They learn from the original lead detective on the Testa case that the location of the knife was discovered via an anonymous tip. When they searched the location, guess who found the knife all those years ago? That's right: Officer Daniels, who had arrested the Grimes previously for the robbery but turned him loose. Hmmm. This is where the episode gets pretty interesting, because it's difficult to figure out where everything is going. When Green visits Daniels to learn the truth about the whole situation, Daniels eventually admits that when he originally arrested Grimes, he beat him up to get a confession, and his lieutenant (now dead) ordered that Grimes be released. Daniels further confesses that he held on to the knife with Sayers' blood on it "for a rainy day" so he could later frame him when the opportunity came. Eventually, Testa was killed and her knife wounds were consistent with the Sayers knife and her blood was the same type (O+). Since DNA evidence didn't exist back then, no one would be the wiser. Daniels placed the knife somewhere, called in the location as anonymous tip, and recovered the knife during the "search." He says he did it because he knew Grimes had killed Sayers but gotten off because of the beating, so he wanted to "balance the scales."

McCoy, SS, and Fallon meet to discuss all this. Fallon says the knife, the confession, and everything else are "poisonous fruit," and inadmissible. McCoy says, Let's let a judge decide.

They revisit the original detective in the Sayers case who says that they searched every storm drain in the neighborhood where Sayers was found. This, improbably, allows McCoy to argue that the knife is subject to the "inevitable discovery" rule, meaning that the police would have discovered it even without the confession.

Fallon disputes this point to McCoy and a judge in what is one the greatest non-McCoy monologues in the history of the series. As he strides quickly down the hall with McCoy and the judge, he argues that the DA's office and police department have violated Grimes' Sixth, Fifth, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights (in that order). (Here is an MP3 of this dialogue. It is truly amazing -- it's as if it came from another Giancarlo Esposito project: The Usual Suspects.) Despite Fallon's eloquence, McCoy wins the point, and the knife is allowed into evidence. McCoy and Daniels have a great conversation about the nature of guilt, and we move into the trial. (48 mins.)

At trial (for the Sayers case), Fallon says that Daniels has a "vendetta" of Grimes (hence the name of the episode). After his testimony, Daniels confronts Green and tries to blame him for all his troubles. As if. Soon after, McCoy gets Grimes to say, in a rage, "I never killed anybody." But of course he did: he killed Donner, the baseball fan. Whoops! McCoy now forces him to confess to the Sayer murder (off screen), which finally establishes that he had a criminal mind before he ever went to prison. There goes his defense in the Donner murder, too! He allocutes to the Sayer murder, and says it was a simple matter where he pursued the girl, she said no, so he stabbed her. He is sentenced to 5 years (on top of the 20 or so he already served for the Testa murder) and also pleads to Man I on the Donner murder, and receives a consecutive sentence of 7.5 to 15 years.

After the trial, Green visits a teary Grimes in a bar, where Grimes reveals he has been "encouraged to take an early retirement." Grimes, though, is unrepentant, saying he did what he felt he had to do.

Analysis

This episode re-imagines the case of Steve Bartman, the Chicago Cubs fan who tried to catch a foul ball that was still in play, a move which interfered with a Cubs outfielder and cost the team an exceedingly rare chance to get to the World Series in 2003. He wasn't killed, but he certainly was reviled.

The episode is very well written, despite a couple of improbable plot devices, and it seems strange that so much hinges on proving Grimes was criminally minded before he ever went to prison. Still, the scene where Briscoe and Green confront Grimes at the bus station is one of the more satisfying we've seen in a while, and coupled with the extraordinary monologue from Esposito/Fallon, the episode stands above many other offerings from the series.

The episode meditates quite a bit on the nature of guilt. Briscoe discusses the issue with Fallon, arguing that many cons who are described as "innocent" have committed several other felonies for which they are not tried. Fallon rebuts his comments, saying it's not right to convict people of crimes they didn't commit. Later, McCoy tries to get Daniels to admit he feels guilty over framing Grimes, but he refuses (until he takes the stand). Furthermore, the Esposito monologue about the violations of his client's rights raises an interesting question: even if all these rights have been violated, isn't a person still, ultimately, guilty? The ep does a nice job of exploring these types of questions without trying to offer a simple answer.

Casting notes: as I mentioned, the brilliant Giancarlo Esposito plays a prominent role. This qualifies as what I call a "universe collision" because Esposito previously played a Detective Mike Giardello on Homicide: Life on the Street, and we know from the cross-over episodes that L&O and H:LOTS exist in the same world (and I should add that Esposito has appeared in two previous L&O episodes, too): therefore actors should not re-appear as different characters. Unfortunately, L&O violates this rule all the time, but I guess this time I am happy they did, because Esposito brings so much to the episode. I think this might be the best performance by a guest-starring actor playing an attorney since the terrific episode with Gregory Hines. (Of course, Peter Jacobson as the recent recurring character "Randy Dworkin" is also very good.) Finally, Carolyn McCormack's Elizabeth Olivet has a prominent role in this episode. She apparently is once again the favored police psychologist, now that JK Simmons (Emil Skoda) has left for another show on CBS.

ps. While this was taping, the NYC blog Gothamist was able to visit the set, and take some great pictures, included one of the reconstructed whiskey bottle/murder weapon.

2.2 Wages of Love: Jerry Orbach Plays a Lawyer

In this early episode (2.2), a married man and his new girlfriend are shot to death in the man's apartment. His wife and son are the primary suspects. Jerry Orbach appears in a pre-Briscoe role as the wife's defense attorney.

The episode begins with a couple of cops eating dinner at a Chinese restaurant talking about how little money they make. A delivery man enters, speaking frantically in Chinese, and he leads the cop upstairs, complaining that he got stiffed out of $26, and that something was wrong. The cops explore the apartment and find the bloody bodies of a man and a woman in bed. Cerreta and Logan arrive and investigate. They identify the man as a Mr. Cullen, but notice that it appears that he is the dominate presence in the apartment: 4 closets of his clothes, but only one of women's clothes. It turns out that he's married -- separated, actually -- and the woman in bed with him is not his wife. I bet you can see where this is going.

The visit the man's wife, who seems upset, but not overly distraught. She recoils when they delicately ask her where she was at the time of the death. She says she was having dinner with her son. The dets want to talk to her son, and she asks whether it is ok if she calls him to say his father is dead. They say ok and leave. They visit the son, Jamie, who is upset and sweaty and says his mother wouldn't kill his father.

They focus their investigation on the ex-boyfriend of the girl found alongside Mr. Cullen. She worked at Christies, the auction house, and her boyfriend is a younger, failing law student. They even go so far as to arrest him, but they don't have much evidence. Cerreta is pretty convinced the ex-boyfriend had nothing to do with it.

Cerreta and Logan discuss food while sitting in the park, and then turn to the case. They realize that Jamie said his mother wouldn't kill his father, but since he was with her at the time, he should have said, "She didn't kill him. That raises their suspicions. At the time of this conversation, by the way, Cerreta is reading a copy of the New York Ledger, the namesake of this website. He is reading a story about the case.

After breaking the mom's alibi by talking to some of Jamie's fellow law students, they arrest Mrs. Cullen, 29 minutes into the episode.

At the arraignment, Jerry Orbach plays her laywer, Frank Lehrman. Post-arraignment, Stone and Lehrman confer, trying to come up with a deal, and Orbach issues his first-ever L&O wisecrack: "It's called plea bargaining, not plea scalping."

Schiff urges Stone to deal, but Stone thinks he can make out a murder case. They review all the evidence, and find that a jewelry clerk accidentally notified Mrs. Cullen about a necklace Mr. Cullen had purchased for his mistress. Also, they learn that a locksmith had given Mrs. Cullen a key to her former apartment, where the murder took place. They bring the son in to the conference room to get more information. They confront him with evidence about the key, which seems to point to the notion that Mrs. Cullen went to the apartment specifically to kill her husband.

At trial (41 minutes), it's difficult to tell who is doing better, but Stone's case suffers a blow when the son changes his testimony about they key, recanted his deposition statement that he arranged for his mom to get a copy of his father's key. This upsets Stone, and he's getting a little nervous. In an unusual gambit, he decides to ask the judge to change the charge against Cullen from Manslaughter to Murder. He feels he's established pre-meditation, and he figures the jury won't want to let the woman walk. The judge allows it, but before the jury can vote, Stone and Lehrman both get nervous and finally come to a plea arrangement: 2 counts of manslaughter, 9 years in prison.

As the episode ends, we learn from jury members talking to the media that they were about to find her guilty on the murder charges.

The episode is notable, of course, because of the early appearance of Jerry Orbach as a character other than Lennie Briscoe. His performance is subtly different from what he does as Briscoe -- a little slicker, a little more intellectual. He's also a little bit stiff acting-wise, as if he hadn't quite gotten comfortable in the role.

Also of note is that the trial judge's name is Rebecca Stein. She shows up in several later episodes, but: in several other episodes, a different actress plays Judge Rebecca Steinman. I guess when the writers find a name they like, they stick with it. Another interesting casting note: Keith Diamond plays a character named "Jackson" in the episode. In real life, Diamond was shot and critically injured by his senile father a few weeks ago in NYC.

It's Official: Orbach to Star in L&O: Trial by Jury

From this article. I hate to say it, but this doesn't bode well for the original series.

14.20 Everybody Loves Raimondo's

In this episode (14.20), two men are shot to death inside a favorite restaurant of mobsters and celebrities. One was killed because he heckled a woman singing Italian songs, the other appears to be an innocent bystander. But as Briscoe and Green learn, the truth is more complicated then that.

The episode is based on a similar shooting at an uptown Manhattan restaurant called Rao's a few months ago.

The episode begins with a man singing opera inside a restaurant. After he finishes, a woman is encouraged to sing a song. It's not as good, and you hear some heckling in the background before shots ring out and panic ensues. Briscoe and Green arrive on the scene and learn that one of the victims is Thomas Mitchell, a movie producer. Briscoe and Green are surprised to run into the NYPD's Chief of Detectives there. They ask him how he arrived so fast, and he says he was already there, having dinner. They learn from him that the other victim, a Mr. Carollo, apparently had some kind of "beef" (dispute) with another customer, who shot him dead. The shooter is a low-level mobster in his late 40s known as "Bumpy," but no one knows his real name. The detectives briefly talk to the owner of the restaurant, Paul Raimondo, who is upset. As Briscoe says, at Raimondo's, "the food is to die for."

Briscoe and Green begin their investigation by talking to other customers. The first one they talk to is a female judge. She explains that she likes the charm of the place, the mix of both sides of the law (successful people of all professions, she says), and she tells them the other victim, Mitchell, was a movie producer who recently produced a film called Al Dente about a mobbed-up restaurant similar to Raimondo's. Everybody, she says, loves Raimondo's.

The bartender at Raimondo's tells the dets that Carollo was "a made buy" and a crew boss. He also explains that people buy tables at the restaurant, so that they are always available when wanted. (They learn later the tables cost $50,000 and dinner for four costs $1000). The detectives learn that Al Dente was based on a tell-all book by a mobster wanna-be, and that Carollo and Bumpy hated each other. They also learn that Carolla ran a poker game on Arthur Avenue on the Bronx. A loan shark/collections manager, who works out of a Catholic church, tells them where they can find Bumpy, an inveterate gambler. The find Bumpy, aka Carmine Bustali, playing poker in the back room at a rec center. He's arrested 13 minutes into the episode.

He tells the detectives what they hadn't up to now realized: he shot Carollo for heckling the lady. Van Buren reports that the ballistics on his gun match the weapon used in Carollo's murder. That's the good news. The bad news is that Mitchell was shot with a different gun. Also, the forensics specialists figured out that the shot came from the bar, not where Bumpy was sitting. So they have to start over with their investigation into Mitchell's death. They visit Mitchell's office and talk to his assistant, who tells them about Sonny King, the author of the book that Al Dente was based on. She says that Mitchell had recently avoided talking to the pushy King, because King was always looking for more money from him. They talk to King, who tells them that people got mad at him because of the book, but he has an alibi for the night of the shooting: he was at a hockey game. Briscoe reads King's book looking for clues, and the dets visit the organized crime task force in New Jersey. They go out to dinner with a lady detective there who identifies a broker of hitmen described in the book named Artie. Briscoe goes undercover to arrange a hit via Artie. He plays pool with them, and makes a lot of fancy shots, then arranges a meeting for 10 o'clock that night in the parking lot. Artie tells him to bring $5,000 in $20 bills. That night, they make the arrest, and Artie soon rolls on Sonny King, saying he arranged the hit. The hit man, he says, is named Denny Rogis. They find Rogis living in a trailer in a salvage yard and arrest him, 28 minutes in to the episode.

But as Briscoe and Green prepare to arrest him, the NJ detective arrests him instead, over their objections. McCoy has to go visit the DA in NJ to figure out why they want to claim the collar. Turns out they just want the spotlight a little bit, which McCoy agrees to give them, as long as they can try Rogis in New York. They begin extradition proceedings, but the judge says he wants more evidence. McCoy comes up with the novel idea of charging him with not paying his tab at Raimondo's. It works, and the judge extradites him to NY on the larceny charge.

They make a deal with Rogis: Murder 2 in exchange for his testimony against King. He agrees, and King is arrested, 37 minutes in. As he cuffs him, Briscoe says, "Fame's a bitch."

The case against King is a little tricky, however, since the murder weapon disappeared during the panic at the scene, and motive still needs to be more firmly established. They learn that King borrowed money from a loan shark to finance the hit, the same loan shark questioned earlier. The loan shark says the collateral was a tape recording of Mitchell telling King he would give him $1 million of the film Al Dente grossed a certain amount of money, which it did. Mitchell never paid him the $1 million, though.

The trial begins (43 minutes in), and the loan shark says that Mitchell was full of crap." When things are going well, McCoy complains that the whole case is "polluted with American mobster mythology." The hitman testifies that he merely took the opportunity to shoot Mitchell in the restaurant because Bumpy had already started shooting Carollo. He also apologizes to Raimondo for shooting someone in his restaurant. When he takes the stand in his own defense, King says he borrowed the money from the loan shark to gamble on horses. He also says that everyone at Raimondo's was upset with Mitchell, too, because of the movie. This makes McCoy think that perhaps someone besides King had a motive to kill Mitchell. They re-interview Baldo, the hitman broker, who eventually admits that King merely wanted Rojis to scare Mitchell, and that someone else paid Rojis to kill Mitchell. That someone else turns out to be the owner of Raimondo's, whom Briscoe confronts. They need to find that missing murder weapon, however. It turns up in the dashboard of Raimondo's car, in a secret compartment opened by pressing the heater and radio buttons at the same time. (This kind of secret compartment was discussed during P. Diddy's trial on those shooting charges.) Raimondo admits he was upset with Mitchell and King over the movie and book, so he figured he could kill Mitchell and indirectly frame King. King is free of the murder charges, but still guilty of attempted robbery.

The episode was written by Sleepers author Lorenzo Carcaterra, a new producer of the show, who has also written a couple of episodes. Another one of his episodes, "Couples," is also elaborate, though even more complicated than this one.

Casting notes: famous cop Bo Dietl plays Bumpy, and several guys from the Sopranos also show up. Ray Abruzzo, who plays Little Carmine on The Sopranos, is Raimondo, and Joseph Gannascoli, one of the fat guys on The Sopranos (the one Christopher threw a sandwich at a few weeks ago), is the hitman broker here.

The title of the episode, of course, is a play on the CBS comedy series "Everybody Loves Raymond" and "Rao's" (pronounced "Ray-O's"), the name of the restaurant Raimondo's seems to be modeled after.

7.20 We Like Mike

In this episode (7.20), Briscoe and Curtis suspect that a guy named Mike Bodack committed a murder, but eventually Bodack becomes their chief witness against another suspect. Unfortunately, Bodack has to sacrifice a lot to testify, so the question becomes whether he has the courage to do so.

After some investigation in the first 10 minutes of the show, Briscoe and Curtis settle on Bodack as their suspect, picking him up at a wedding reception and taking him in for questioning. He had the blood of his victim, Matthew Sherman, on the suit jacket he was wearing the night of the murder, but he says he merely helped him change a flat tire and moved on. Under pressure, he finally tells detectives that he saw another man approach the victim as he was leaving: a Puerto Rican guy with a tattoo of a dragon on his arm. Mike's new in-laws show up and stop the interview.

Still pursuing Mike as their suspect, they head over to his place of work -- a bookie's office in the Bronx. They meet another worker there who is very nervous, and afraid that Ray, their boss, will get upset if any calls go unanswered. Poking around, Briscoe finds a gun in the cabinet. Unfortunately for them, it's not the murder weapon. The case against Mike is falling apart, so they dig deeper and start looking into the Puerto Rican tattoo guy angle. They talk to a Korean dry cleaner in the neighborhood who saw a woman robbed. The detectives tak to the woman who says that indeed it was a Latino male with a dragon tattoo who robbed her. They trace this transient guy through his medical care, learn his name is Ricardo Garcia, and eventually discover that he's been arrested for shoplifting. They head down to the courthouse where he's being arraigned, expecting to take him down for the police station for a line-up so that the lady he robbed a while back can identify him. But when they get there, he's apparently been taken back to wherever he was being held, and they can't find him. Also, a uniformed officer had taken the woman to the courthouse instead of to the precinct. But, through coincidence, the woman looks over Briscoe's shoulder and sees Garcia, the guy who robbed her. She says, "That's him!" and they bring him in for questioning.

They search his brother's apartment, where they get a wallet that says "MS" from his brother, and find the murder weapon under a mattress, as well as a sock with some blood on it. After some coaxing from Briscoe, Garcia confesses, and says he didn't mean to do it.

Meanwhile, Mike is freed from Rikers and charges against him are dropped. Cheekbones apologizes to him, but he's still upset. But, McCoy and Carmichael may not be done with him yet: things aren't going well against Garcia, because a judge suppresses the mugging victim's ID of Garcia because it was improper, and so all the evidence that derived from that is tossed out, too. In this way, Mike becomes the chief witness against Garcia. Ross visits him at his job as a doorman, and he picks Garcia out of a line-up. Garcia is arrested. (34 minutes in.)

As they prepare for trial, Cheekbones can't find Mike. Eventually, she finds him hiding in his apartment, which has been torn up by people trying to intimidate him. He no longer wants to testify. To find out whose intimidating him, they tap his phones and listen to a call threatening him. They trace the call to -- who else -- Garcia's brother.

The trial begins (44 minutes in) and the victim's wife testifies. But before Mike can testify, the bookie's office where he worked gets raided, and he's charges with vice crimes. McCoy heads out to the Bronx to negotiation with the DA so he can get Mike released to testify. Unfortunately, Mike doesn't want to testify any more because anything he says in the Garcia case can be used against him by the Bronx DA, who wants to convict Mike of the bookmaking crimes.

After much thought, Mike takes the stand, but then tries to take the fifth amendment on certain questions so he doesn't incriminate himself. The judge orders all of Mike's testimony to be thrown out and releases him from the stand. McCoy pleads with the judge to allow him to confer with Mike, but it seems to late. But then Mike has a crisis of conscience, and McCoy tells him if he doesn't testify the murderer will go free. Mike returns to the stand and testifies against Garcia. We like Mike! He saves the day, and Garcia is convicted. The cherry on the sundae is that the Bronx DA drops the charges against Mike, and everybody is happy.

It seems not believable that Garcia would be convicted almost solely on the basis of Mike's seeing Garcia approach the victim, but whatever.

Quick casting note: the victim's wife is played by Reiko Aylesworth, who went on to star as Michelle Dessler on 24.

11.13 Phobia

In this episode (11.13), one member of a gay couple is killed, and their adopted infant son is kidnapped. Looks like a jealous biological parent might be involved. Briscoe and Green investigate, while McCoy and Carmichael seek justice.

The episode begins with a couple discussing their son moving back in with them when they discover the victim, one of their neighbors named Bradford. The responding police discover an empty baby carriage and a baby bottle several yards away from the body, and conclude that a kidnapping happened, too. Briscoe and Green question the people standing around, including a seltzer water delivery guy who says he doesn't recognize the victim.

After the opening credits, we learn that the baby is prone to seizures and requires medication. The remaining gay parent of the child receives a ransom call demanding money, and Green and Briscoe go undercover with a bunch of other cops to bust the perpetrator. They leave the money in an envelope under a bunch, and a bike messenger drives by and picks up the envelope. They pursue him in their car, and watch as he approaches another man in a Volkwagen Passat sedan. (The musical score to the scene is interesting, a little bit of an eerie tone -- very unusual for the show.) The cops rush in, and the messenger admits that another guy paid him $50 to pick up the envelope. The businessman in the Passat he was talking to says he saw another guy in a blue van with license plates that ended in "MNKY". The dets let the men go, and trace the plates to a motorcycle shop, where the proprietor reluctantly says that the van belongs to one of his employees who calls himself "hose monkey." But hose monkey isn't there -- he's at his second job...as a seltzer water delivery man! They question the delivery man -- the same guy from the teaser -- and he says he just tried to collect the ransom to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity, and that he didn't kidnap the child.

The dets head over to the Agency for Child Services and learn that the child's biological mother, Ms. Goddard, was a drug addict who once came in trying to get her baby back, even though she had previously voluntarily signed it away. The other lead they pursue is the child's medication -- he requires a form of phenobarbitol for his seizures, so they visit various pharmacies trying to figure out if anyone has picked up this medication lately. They eventually find a woman named Susan Powers picked up a matching prescription. They visit the bookstore where she works, and a female employee their is evasive, but Susan's number is on a phone list next to the cash register. They call the number, and the woman blurts out "it's the police" to warn Susan on the other end of the line. They trace the number, and head over to the apartment. Predictably, no one is there, but there's an unusual sign on the wall that talks about some rules for answering the phone -- never disclosing the location, etc. They trace the lease on the apartment, and learn that it's leased by a woman who co-ordinates an "underground railroad" for battered and abused women. After being convinced by the detectives (and Van Buren) that the woman they are looking for is a kidnapper and not actually and abused woman, she rolls and leads them to the mother, who has borded a bus. They board the bus at Port Authority, arrest the woman. All this, and we're still only 22 minutes into the episode.

In several scenes where the actress playing her overacts, an angry Ms. Goddard, the missing baby's biological mom, steadfastly refuses to admit where the baby is. Eventually, McCoy offers a deal to Goddard if she'll just describe how the murder took place and where the baby is. She accepts, and she tells them that the baby's biological father killed the gay adoptive parent and kidnapped the baby, in her presence and acting on information she provided. The detectives head up to Peekskill and arrest the baby's father, Mr. Kelly, and recover the baby. 31 minutes in. In a touching scene, Briscoe and Green reuinite the baby with his remaining adoptive father.

Kelly pleads not guilty at his arraignment where his lawyer takes the unusual step of previewing the strategy he's going to use in his case: the father, not knowing he had a boy, was enraged when he found out that his son had been adopted. At a conference with McCoy, Goddard says she purposely told Kelly that their son had been adopted by a gay couple because she knew this would make him so angry he would do anything to recover the baby. Based on this and Kelly's history of hateful behavior towards gays, McCoy seeks to charge him with a hate crime. At trial (beginsa t 40 minutes in), not much new information comes out, but the remaining gay parent testifies about what good parents they were. Kelly is found guilty of Manslaughter 1, and the crime is also determined to be a hate crime.

As everyone clears out of the courtroom, Goddard asks Alvers (the gay parent) to tell her son about her. He says, a bit mysteriously, "One day you'll tell him yourself." I guess this means that Alvers would find a place for Goddard in the child's life one day.

The episode's title refers to Kelly's homophobia, which causes him to commit this crime.

9.16 Harm

In this episode (9.16), an old, retired lawyer is found very badly beaten in his home. Was it someone who had an axe to grind over his arbitration work? Yes it was, but the case unexpectedly leads to an investigation into a medical practice where it appears the doctors botched a routine surgery, leading to a woman's death. Briscoe and Curtis investigate, then McCoy and Carmichael seek justice.

The episode begins with the discovery of the unconscious and bloody lawyer by his daughter and granddaughter ("He's taking a nap....He won't wake up"). The murder weapon: a glass beer stein. Sounds like a crime of opportunity, one of those "I tried to talk to him, but he wouldn't listen" types. Briscoe and Curtis learn that the dead guy is a lawyer who occasionally helps out with couples arbitration. They look to see if he had any unhappy clients and come up with a Dr. Weiss and Mrs. Macfarlane, long-divorced but still fighting over the proceeds from his pension plan or something. Eventually they come up with the theory that the victim, Mr. Slattery, was bought off by Dr. Weiss so that he would decide in his favor. They further theorize that Macfarlane learned of the scheme, and killed him in revenge. Mrs. Macfarlane brought in for questioning, and soon enough they find enough physical evidence (blood, etc) to establish she did the assault. She confesses.

Sounds easy, right? Well, not so fast: as they look into Dr Weiss, they discover one case of a woman, Maureen Girard, who went in to have some uterine cysts removed and ended up dead. They ask Weiss what happened, but he's not much help. They begin to believe that his partner, Dr Rudnick had helped Weiss in the Slattery affair, and that Weiss is now covering up the cause of Girard's death to return the favor.

Evidence seems to suggest that a certain medical machine -- one used to pump fluid into a patients body -- malfunctioned during the procedure. Carmichael aks the medical staff to learn what happened, but encounters resistance, especially from a nurse named Panati. She does manage to learn, however, that a woman named Glynnis was in the room at the time of the surgery, operating the machine, but no one named Glynnis is employed at the hospital (at least outside of the cafeteria). Continuing to look for the cause of the equipment malfunction, Carmichael visits the manufacturer of the device, where she unintentionally learns they have a sales representative named --- you guessed it --- Glynnis.

Turns out Glynnis, an untrained person, was demonstrating the machine's use for the doctors, and the machine screwed up, filling the patient with fluid until she died. Carmichael wants to charge Glynnis and the doctors with murder, though both McCoy and Schiff are doubtful they can make it stick.

Judge Wright (the judge who looks like Peter Boyle) reviews the evidence and decides that Murder 2 can't be sustained, byt criminally negligent homicide can be. However, AC visits ole Nurse Panati again and Panati admits that Glynnis was operating the machine at the instruction of the doctors. (Very unusual!)

At trial (which begins 41 minutes in), Panati admits that she falsified the machine's records to cover for the other doctors. Realizing things are going badly, one of the other doctors (Dr Michaels) says he has damaging information about the other two, but Carmichael refuses to dead. He kills himself, but we learn from his lawyer that the other two doctors were receiving kickbacks from the medical equipment company. AC then asks the judge to re-instate Murder 2 charges. He does, and the remaining doctors plea to Man 1, 15 years each.

The episode is notable because Carmichael takes the lead in the trial and runs it herself. McCoy said malpractice cases rarely make good murder cases unless the doctor is stoned at the time of the surgery, so it's doubly impressive that Abbie was so successful. Another funny thing: Schiff makes a comment to Carmichael about McCoy's love life: "Where's McCoy? Out on a date with that history professor?" The line doesn't quite fit either Schiff's style or the rest of the episode, so it feels a little too purposely dropped, as if to throw a crumb to the backstory-fanatics out there.

Casting note: Mrs Macfarlane's defense attorney (who is in the ep for about 2 minutes) is played by Al Sapienza, who went on to play Mikey Palmici on The Sopranos.

The episode's title, I think, come's from the motto for doctors: "First, do no harm."

9.9 True North

In this episode (9.9), a woman kills a wealthy man and his young daughter, but it looks like the man's ambitious Canadian wife might be behind it all. Briscoe and Curtis investigate.

The episode begins with some uniformed police officers storming a townhouse where a neighbor reported hearing 3 shots. When they enter, the find the man, a Mr. Harker, and his daughter shot dead. The nieghbor says he saw a woman running from the scene. For some reason, the first place Briscoe and Curtis check is the woman's parking garage, I guess to see whether she has fled the scene. They learn from the attendant, after some pressuring, that the woman let another man share one of her spots in the garage. They visit this guy, a small-time drug dealer named Petoskey, who they catch with a toilet-tank full of drugs. They learn from him that Mrs. Harker has a friend named Doris Nichols who she might be staying with, so they set about trying to find her. They find a cab driver who called 911 after seeing Nichols bloody and armed. They trace her to a bar, and find her dead. Mrs. Harker killed her.

Mrs. Harker tells the detectives that Nichols told her she had killed her husband and step-daughter, and that she was going to kill her next. Harker says she got the gun away and killed Nichols. Briscoe and Curtis have to further investigate to check out her story, but they don't arrest her.

They talk to the late Mr Harker's lawyer who says that Mrs Harker is bad girl, a drug addict, and an adultress. And she's Canadian. "The new DA" Abbie Carmichael also joins the investigation. She delays ordering Briscoe and Curtis to arrest Harker, and this causes a problem, because by the time they finally do get permission to arrest her, Harker has fled, apparently to Canada.

They eventually get the Ontario Provincial Police to track down and arrest Harker, and McCoy and Carmichael suspect that Mrs Harker paid Nichols to kill Mr Harker. This makes it Murder 1, a capital offense, but Canada refuses to extradite Harker because they don't want to subject her to the death penalty. Schiff settles the dispute by ordering McCoy to tell them they won't seek the death penalty in the case.

As the investigation continues, they learn from Petoskey that he provided the gun to Harker, not Nichols, which bolsters the theory that Harker was ultimately responsible for the murders. The plot thickens, however, when they learn that Mrs Harker was Mr Harker's second wife, and that the first Mrs Harker was killed under mysterious circumstances -- she was run over by a red Ford Escort in Buffalo. They begin to suspect that the second Mrs Harker might have been the one behind the wheel. Carmichael talks to Mrs Harker's father to determine if this might be the case, but he isn't much help. She tracks down another friend of Harker's in the city whom she pressures into giving information about an ex-boyfriend of Harker's who owned a used car lot and used to let Mrs Harker borrow cars (before she was Mrs Harker). Briscoe and Curtis head up to Buffalo to question the car dealer who remembers letting her borrow the Ford Escort, and remembers that it was banged up when she returned it. (She said she had hit a deer.) With this new information, Schiff decides to seek the death penalty. Canada gets upset and refuses to provide some financial evidence that would have supported the case against Harker, but AC visits a NYC branch of the Canadian bank they need access to and pressures them into releasing the data they need.

The trial begins at 41 minutes in, and it goes pretty well for McCoy. It goes even better when Harker takes the stand, and McCoy gets her all worked up and shows everyone what a bad and angry person she is. Apparently, she killed her husband for the money, and was in a way acting out the anger she felt over being dumped by a rich boy when she was younger. No explanation as to why the step-daughter was killed, though. Anyway, the jury returns a guilty verdict and shortly thereafter Harker is sentenced to death.

7.5 Corruption

In this episode (7.5), a corrupt detective murders a small-time drug dealer in the presence of Briscoe and Curtis, and then tries to smear Briscoe as his own career falls apart.

The episode begins with a bunch of detectives, including Briscoe and Curtis, undercover preparing to make a drug buy followed by an arrest. Briscoe and another detective, John Flynn, approach the suspect, with whom they had apparently arranged a meeting. Curtis and some other detectives look on from nearby positions. As Briscoe heads back to the car to retrieve the money, Flynn yells "Gun!" and two shots ring out. When Briscoe turns around again and everyone storms the scene, the dealer is dead, two shots to the chest.

Flynn tells everyone he saw the dealer -- Ruben Morales -- make a move for his gun, so he fired. He tells everyone that when the investigation into the shooting occurs, the investigators will expect uniform recollection of events, and he makes sure everyone has his story straight. Curtis resists this, however, and says he's not sure whether he saw Morales reach for a gun. This creates immediate tension between Curtis and Flynn, and Flynn tells Briscoe to tell his young partner "how things are done."

The Internal Affairs Bureau (IAB) conducts an investigation of the shooting, and they interview Briscoe and Curtis. Briscoe reveals he worked with Flynn previously for several years in the 116th precinct. When they interview Curtis they ask him if he knew why Morales was the targeted dealer that night, and if he knew a man named Hector Garcia. Curtis answers no to both questions, and is non-responsive when they ask him whether they saw Morales reach for a gun.

Suspicious, Curtis begins investigating the shooting on his own. He wants to discover the connection between Garcia, Morales, and Flynn. He talks to a cop who recently arrested Morales and learns that he should have been behind bars, but the DAs office let him go, apparently because he decided to roll on Hector Garcia, his boss. Curtis tries to track down Morales' brother. Finding no answer at his apartment, he asks a neighbor -- a woman and her young, brainy son. The son asks Curtis some questions about being a cop, Curtis says he's "Peruvian on my mother's side," and finds out the the Morales brother works in a dance club/bar nearby. At the bar, he sweet-talks a hostess who tells him where Morales might be staying. He arrives at the near-empty apartment, gun drawn, and finds a panicked Morales hiding in a closet. Morales is is great distress and is fearful of being shot. Curtis calms him down, and Morales says that after he and his brother rolled on Garcia, they knew Garcia would try to kill him. This suggests that Flynn killed Morales as a services to Garcia.

Curtis brings this information to Briscoe, who doesn't want to hear it. They have a heated discussion at the end of which Briscoe basically tells Curtis that he's on his own.

Curtis then looks into the connection between Garcia and Flynn. He talks to the DA who was going to prosecute Garcia several years ago (but who is now a personal injury lawyer) and learns that the case against Garcia never went to trial because the evidence against him was stolen from the property room at the 116th precinct. Meanwhile, Flynn talks to Briscoe and says he wants to confront Curtis, because he's heard rumors that Curtis is investigating him. At this meeting, Flynn angrily confronts Curtis, and then when Briscoe says something that is faintly defensive of Curtis, Flynn turns on both of them, and says he will make both of their lives miserable if they don't back down.

This gets Briscoe heated up, and he starts investigating Flynn, too. He pressures and connives the other detectives the night of the shooting to give him some information about how Morales ended up there. He learns that a snitch named Two-tone set it up. Briscoe tracks down Two-tone at a dice game, and roughly questions him about the circumstances leading up to the shooting. He learns that Flynn arranged it. Curtis and Briscoe together talk to one of the other detectives, Kenny Edwards, and Edwards admit that he got paid $200 a week from Flynn, and that he keeps the money in a coffee can in his basement. The money, he says, came from Hector Garcia.

Cheekbones, aka Jamie Ross, then gets involved and joins the IAB's investigation of Flynn. He keeps calling her "sweetheart," etc., sarcastically, but it's clear that he's cornered. When Flynn challenges them to arrest him, she issues the command to arrest him. (28 minutes in to the ep.)

At this point, political issues begin complicating the legal ones. Judge Hellman, of the Hellman Commission that is investigating police corruption, calls Schiff and says that he wants to make a deal with Flynn for his testimony. McCoy doesn't want that to happen, and he tries to get Flynn to roll on Garcia, who we learn has been a target of the DA's office for many years. Flynn refuses.

Cheekbones then talks to Flynn's mistress, who has seen Garcia and Flynn together. McCoy then confronts Flynn again and offers him Murder 2 in exchange for testimony against Garcia. Flynn retorts, "The offer is: kiss my ass." Cheekbones wants to offer more of a deal to get Garcia, but McCoy says the a corrupt, murdering cop is the worst kind of criminal, and should be prosecuted as such. Unfortunately for McCoy, Judge Hellman goes over his head and cuts a deal with Flynn: 2-6 years and lifetime probabation in exchange for testimony against other corrupt cops. McCoy meets with Hellman and is outraged, but there's nothing he can do. The governor and mayor's offices have both approved the deal.

Flynn testifies before the Hellman commission on TV as Briscoe, Van Buren, and the rest of the precinct watch. He discusses corrupt cops, but doesn't name Garcia. Eventually, he explains the time when Garcia got off because of the missing evidence. He says Briscoe is the detective who stole the evidence. Back at the precinct, Briscoe storms out of the room.

We next see Briscoe testifying before the commission. He says that he was home at the time of the theft, and that the login sheet had been falsified. He admits that he is a recovering alcoholic and that he was drunk on that day. It's clearly a humiliating experience for Briscoe, but he's apparently rather admit that he was drunk than that he was corrupt.

CB and McCoy investigate, and CB attempts to clear Briscoe's name. Schiff is uneasy about becoming the "Briscoe defense committee" but McCoy assures him it's in everbody's best interest to learn the truth. They learn that a sargeant named Dave Spence quit the precinct shortly after the evidence disappeared. Cheekbones attempts to track him down, but learns he's dead. Briscoe tells McCoy he wants to wear a wire to get Flynn to admit he was lying, saying he's got nothing to do since he's on "indefinite ass duty" since the commission hearing. McCoy refuses.

CB visits Spence's attorney to see if she can learn whether Spence did indeed steal the evidence. He can't violate privilege even though Spence is dead, but he's obviously charmed by CB, so he says something like, "I'm going to open that door and let you out. If I don't fall and break my arm by the time I get there, you can assume that my client admitted he did the crime in question."

Next, we see Briscoe entering what is apparently his apartment building. (Wow, that's the first time we've followed Briscoe home, I think.) A woman named Betty Abrams is waiting for him. It turns out that she and Briscoe were having an affair at the time of the property theft and that they were together the night before the incident. Somehow this means that Briscoe couldn't have stolen the evidence. We also learn that Abrams was married at the time of the affair. She says she wants to tell the committee this to clear Briscoe's name, but he says she shouldn't. Nonetheless, she testifies about this to the commission, and Hellman goes after her, trying to make her out to be a serial liar. He forces her to admit to other affairs. Briscoe is angry with McCoy for letting this happen, saying "I'm going to kick your ass from here to Hoboken," (but really, what does McCoy have to do with it?) but McCoy says the woman volunteered and was not pursued by the DA's office. Briscoe confronts Hellman in the bathroom, saying, "So this is how you get off," and calling him all sorts of names.

Briscoe tells McCoy he's going to do things his way, and he meets Flynn in a Catholic church, where Flynn is leaving the confessional. He gets him to say that he knows Briscoe didn't steal the evidence, but it's clear Flynn knows Briscoe is wearing a wire.

McCoy and CB prepare to arrest Flynn for violating his parole agreement by perjuring himself. Briscoe volunteers to go along. They show up at his house, and talk to him as he prepares to leave. He walks into the bathroom and -- no surprise here -- shoots himself dead.

The episode is notable for a couple reasons. We see the Hellman Comission in action. The commission has been referred to in several episodes, and every now and then someone brings up its investigation into Briscoe. We see that the commission is motivated by politics and the desire to make the front pages of the newspapers, not out of a real quest for truth. Also notable is the quick trip to the lobby of Briscoe's apartment building. The building seemed relatively high-end: a nice, atrium-like lobby with a doorman, desk, etc.

About This Site

Since this site has been getting a little bit of traffic lately (thanks Metafilter and Gothamist), I thought I'd take a second to explain it, just in case it needs explaining.

The site is supposed to be a fairly complete source of current information about Law & Order in all its flavors, but right now I'm focused on creating detailed summaries for each of the 320 (and counting) episodes of the original series. I started in late December 2003, and I've got 170 or so done, and hope to be nearly finished around the end of June. As a result of this enterprise, the site has a tendency to be, in my opinion, pretty boring. My summaries are often dispassionate, though my hatred of a couple characters and script writers seeps through once in a while. So, like I say, it might not be that exciting, but if you're into L&O, maybe you'll enjoy it.

Regardless, here are some highlights:

• The episode with Mayor Bloomberg.
• The episode with Mayor Giuliani.
• The episode with Janeane Garofalo.
• The episode with Claire Danes, when she was 13.
• The 1991 episode with a very young Philip Seymour Hoffman, playing a teenaged rape suspect. Incredibly, Samuel L. Jackson plays his defense attorney.
• And for old-timey L&O fans, the episode where McCoy goes to the US Supreme Court.

I write the summaries because there doesn't seem to be another unofficial source for detailed summaries of all the episodes elsewhere on the web. (If you know of someone else who has done this, please don't tell me, because I'm too far gone to quit now.)

Once I finish writing up all the eps, I think this site will be a little more concerned with recent off-screen developments related to the show...until I turn my attention to the 170 episodes of SVU and Criminal Intent I haven't written about yet.

ps. Comments are turned off temporarily as a spam-prevention measure, but you can email me if you want.

9.5 Agony

In this elaborate episode (9.5), a mailman is killed and a young woman is tortured for 36 hours. It looks like a serial killer is to blame, but Briscoe, Curtis, McCoy, and Carmichael have trouble making the charges stick.

The episode begins with an older couple bickering about whether to go to a wedding. The man almost stumbles over the body of a mailman in the building. He died of stabwounds. Briscoe and Curtis arrive on the scene and begin canvassing the building. They knock on a half-open door and enter the apartment. In the bedroom, they found an extremely bloodied young woman who has been slashed up, stabbed, and nearly strangled. She is still alive.

The dets talks to her parents who immediately say, "It's Roger," referring to her abusive ex-husband. The dad says it wasn't Roger, but the mom is convinced it was. Briscoe and Curtis talk to Roger. As they do, a woman who appears to be his assistant looks at them defensively. It turns out she's his new girlfriend. Roger has an alibi -- he says he was with a friend that night. The friend confirms the alibi, and says that the new girlfriend is very demanding.

We learn that the stab wounds in both victims were 1-inch in diameter and u-shaped. Forensics is not sure what caused them. A friend of the victim tells the detectives about other men she dated, including a sort of gigolo who preys on newly-divorced women. He has an alibi, too. He also tells the detectives the name of another conquest who was friends with the victim. They talk to her in Central Park and she tells them that she ran into Roger's friend -- the one who supported his alibi -- at a club the night the incident occurred. This means the friend was lying, and Roger doesn't have an alibi after all. They bring him in for questioning, and he admits that he was with an expensive call girl that night. The dets question the call girl who confirms his story and says that he had 5 girls for 11 hours, at a cost of $25,000.

When the victim, Kitty, finally wakes up, they try to get some more information out of her, but she says she doesn't remember anything beyond the assailant saying, "Don't turn around." Based on the crime, Skoda (with a mustache) profiles the attacker, saying he's meticulous, organized, travels frequently, is into sadistic porn, had no prior relationship with the victim, goes trolling for victims, and perhaps it was his first atttempt at such a crime. Van Buren tells her detectives to look through old cases that might be "close calls" and see what they come up with.

Doing so, they find a woman named Erica who was nearly strangled to death by a man she met in a bar. She says it was an S&M session that got out of hand. She doesn't know the details of the man's identity, but she says his name was Matt and she tells them where the apartment is. They visit the apartment, where they find an older woman. She doesn't know Matt, but says she found a "perverted" tape in the VCR when she moved in. Through the rental agency, the dets learn the identity of the perpetrator: Matt Bergstrom, a software developer from Seattle who frequently visits NYC. They track down Matt through his employer, and find him at a restaurant with a female co-worker. They bring him in for questioning.

During his interrogation, he is calm and collected. Mo, the detective who helps out Briscoe and Curtis sometimes, says he found some people who recall seeing him in the neighborhood where Kitty had been out dancing the night she was attacked. They also find all kinds of S&M gear in his apartment, but no u-shaped stabbing tool. Bergstrom says he has co-operated for 5 hours and wants to be charged or released. They bring in Erica to get her to press charges, since they don't have enough evidence to arrest him for the attack on Kitty. She is extremely reluctant -- she says she works for a politician -- but Van Buren sends the male dets out of the room and shows her pictures of what happened to Kitty and tells her she needs to put a stop to this guy. AVB's gesture works and they arrest Bergstrom.

At Rikers, McCoy and Carmichael visit Bergstrom to get him to talk. It doesn't go very well. Mostly he just stares intensely at Carmichael and seems to be undressing her (and God knows what else) in his mind. Back at the office, Schiff says, if you have no case against him, then settle for a plea on a misdemeanor assault charge. Carmichael doesn't like the sound of that very much.

Briscoe and Curtis continue to work the case. They talk to the little, bald forensics guy, who tells them he found a piece of wood in the shoes of Bergstrom, possibly from a railroad tie. Curtis looks at his financial records, and sees that Bergstrom went to a restaurant at Fort Tryon Park three times in one week. (Fort Tryon is in northern Manhattan, far out of the way for a business traveller.) They visit the restaurant and learn that Bergstrom would request the same table every time and look out the window and smile. Some cops spotted him coming out the park one night at 4 am and held on to him while they looked around, but eventually released him.

McCoy and Carmichael continue to investigate, too. They try to get the Houston police department involved, too, since Bergstrom spent some time there as well. They learn of a missing person there named Anna Laskey, who was last seen with Bergstrom. They confront him with this info at Rikers, but he doesn't budge. Carmichael tells him aggressively "We're closing in on you," and she threatens him with the death penalty in Texas, saying, "They throw the switch a lot faster down there." After they leave Bergstrom, McCoy has noticed that AC is a little aggravated, and basically tells her to calm down. She says it drives her crazy when Bergstrom looks at her like "a carcass on a meat hook." Apparently, though, Carmichael's ploy works and Bergstrom's lawyer says he'll plead to 25 to life, as long as they can secure an agreement from the state gov't not to extradite him to Texas or another death penalty state. McCoy says fine, but you give me something in return. Bergstrom says, "How'd you like to close some cases?"

Schiff, McCoy, Skoda, and AC debate what to do. Schiff says, Make the deal. McCoy offers 25 to life in exchange for the info, and he'll plead guilty for the death of the mailman and the attack on Kitty. He reserves the right to prosecute on other cases if they find evidence independent of what Bergstrom gives them. It's a deal. Bergstrom says he'll show them where 6 bodies are, but won't confess to their murders.

The detectives, the DAs, and the ME look at the sets of bones at the ME's office. The dets can't believe he won't be prosecuted for these murders. It seems like everything is all set, and then Kitty gets a note at her apartment: "Dear Kitty...You think that was bad. Wait til next time."

Kitty is understandably upset over this development, despite McCoy's assurances they'll find out who sent the note. This could be bad -- if the person who sent the note is the same one who originally attacked her, then Bergstrom is not guilty of the crimes he just plead to. They check all the original suspects, and Roger's new girlfriend is the only one without a solid alibi. They visit her father's woodworking shop on Long Island, where they meet her oddly cold and distant brother. Briscoe turns up a wood working tool that matches the one used in the attack on Kitty.

They bring in the brother for questioning, and he is creepy as hell. He's got a dispassionate voice and dead eyes that react to nothing. Straightaway, he admits to the murder and says that his sister put him up to it, telling him to "make it look like some psycho did it." AC's reply: "Guess what? Some psycho did do it." When his lawyer insists that the sister made him do it, McCoy says, did she tell him to be sure to kill the postman on the way out, too?

The confession brings concern for the DAs, however. As McCoy says, they got played by Bergstrom. He knew they'd find the bodies eventually, so he cut a deal on the crime he didn't commit to escape prosecution for the ones he did. Schiff orders McCoy to release Bergstrom. Abbie gets angry, and Schiff says, "Don't rant...offer a solution." She proposes a novel plan: convict Bergstrom on the state charges related to Kitty, and then go after the brother and sister on federal charges for killing the mailman. McCoy can't believe his ears and says, Do you know what you're proposing? He tells her the NYC DA's office is not going to convict someone of a crime he didn't commit. Abbie (beautifully!) retorts, "I'm just taking a page from the Jack McCoy playbook!" and she brings up the old disciplinary charges against McCoy that stemmed from his hiding a witness from the defense. They start yelling at each other, but then McCoy calms down and comes up with a new plan: bluff Bergstrom into believing that they're going to release him and Texas wants him.

Here's how it works: they write a fake letter on Texas DA's office letterhead (which Abbie had left over from her days in Texas). The letter says they found the body of Anna Laskey in Texas, and they want to charge Bergstrom with her murder. They visit Bergstrom in prison, where his lawyer withdraws his earlier plea on the charges, since the brother and sister have confessed to the crime. They show this letter to Bergstrom and his lawyer, and he panics. He doesn't know what to do. He says, You can't prosecute me on those bodies because we had a deal. AC reminds him he just withdrew the deal. Bergstrom realizes he's screwed, and he blames AC. "You bitch!" he exclaims. She comes back at him, threatening him with the death penalty in Texas: "If they let me push the button, I'll do it." Bergstrom, saying he doesn't want AC to control his fate, makes a deal on the NY murders to save himself from being extradited to TX. AC gets up to leave, but Bergstrom stands up and yells at her "Sit down! You listen to what I did." AC sits down, and they all listen to how Bergstrom sliced up one of his victims. He says some disgusting stuff and everyone looks disgusted. His last words are, "I had total control."

The episode is notable because of the unusual legal maneuvering, and also the fierce fight between McCoy and Carmichael.

10.18 Mega

Michael McKean guest stars in this episode (10.18) in which 6 people are killed in a helicopter crash that was the result of a bomb on board. Who was responsible: the jealous wife, the leader of a quasi-cult for rich people, or another jealous wife? Briscoe and Green investigate.

The episode begins with the helicopter taking off and crashing just off camera. The detecives learn that the explosion was a small one. ("We're not talking about Osama Bin Laden," one of the forensic techs says in an episode that pre-dated 9/11.) Since the helicopter was en route to JFK, they wonder if the bomb was meant to detonate on a jet. They learn that one of the victims had fun permits and had been audited by the IRS twice and was headed to Washington. Perhaps he was trying to send a message to some politicians? When they go through the pilot's luggage, they find evidence he was having an affair. The good-looking audio forensics guy (who has appeared in a previous episode) analyzes the tape between the pilot and his dispatchers at the heliport, and they hear him saying "I'm sorry...I'm sorry." Forensics determines that the bomb was kept in a small gift box. Green decipher the letters on the box, and connects it to a boutique. They connect the purchase to a Maggie Callister, wife of one of the victims.

To learn more about Maggie, they question the rich friends she is staying with. Michael McKean palys one of these frends, Elias Grace. They learn that her husband had his financial assets, apparently in anticipation of a divorce from her. They arrest Maggie at 26 minutes in, reasoning that she gave the bomb to her husband.

Her defense attorney rightly wonders, Who made the bomb? Probably not Maggie. That means someone else must be responsible. Going through her financial records, they learn that she had recently given $200,000 to a company called the KBG Corporation. Her husband's brother tells them that this was a leadership training group, of sorts, which solicited very large donations from its members. He says that his brother had refused to give up so much money. It turns out that Grace is the founder and controller of KBG. Another member/client of KBG says that he made a lot of money because of Grace, and so did everyone else. Schiff begins to wonder how much of a cult KBG is, and harumphs when he's told it has to do with self-actualization.

McCoy confronts Grace, who tells him that KBG merely helps out a "wide circle of friends. During this exchange, Grace's wife seems oddly devoted to her husband, a little Stepford-y. The new theory of the crime becomes that Grace was upset because Mr. Callister was withholding funds, and killed him as a result.

They search Grace's Rockland estate and find guns, but also learn from his groundskeeper that two sticks of dynamite, used to clear beaver dams, were missing. At Grace's arraignment (41 minutes in), it's disclosed that the Graces are worth $50 million.

Maggie Callister refuses to roll on her friends, however, but then some new information emergers: Mr. Callister was having an affair with Grace's wife! Here's a new motive. Valerie rolls on her husband in front of him, despite his loud objections. She says he learned of the affair and decided to kill Callister. But there's one more twist left: When McCoy suspects that Valerie had "gaslighted" her husband, Valerie tells McCoy the affair never really happened. She just made it look like it had happened, so that she could control their financial empire. They can't prosecute her, even though this is basically the sort of thing McCoy has prosecuted people for in the past.

11.5 Return

In this episode (11.5), the prime suspect in a murder flees to Israel to escape prosecution, and McCoy and Carmichael try to get him back. The murder involves a family business. Briscoe and Green investigate.

The episode begins with some teenagers going into the basement of a store they shouldn't, and discovering the body. It's a leather goods store, and the owner is the victim, Saul Kaplan. He's found with two gunshot wounds and $240 in his wallet. The kids reluctantly admit they were with a hooker that night. They talk to the hooker, and she tells them that another hooker she knows, a transvestite named Toreador, has a brand new leather jacket. They track down Toreador, a real character, who admits she got the jacket from a "friend" of hers. The friend is an employee of the store who was stealing from it, but he is innocent of the murder. They learn that the lock on the basement door had been tampered with post-opening, which means that whoever unlocked it had the key, but tried to make it look like he didn't. Going through the employee records, they find a guy with a record named Sal. His friend Eddie Novello has a jacket from the store, and under pressure, Eddie, who isn't too smart, confesses to the murder and says Sal ordered it. They pick up Sal at an afterhours club, and learn that he frequently sold jackets there with his friend Eli Becker. Eli, it turns out, is another employee of the store, and the son of the victim's business partner. Eli's about to be arrested, but he flees to Israel.

The Israeli consulate says that Eli has claimed his "right of return" as a Jew, and wants to have a trial in Israel. He was a resident of Israel a few years earlier, and so therefore says he is eligible to stay. Eli's father is no help at all, and is very protective of his son. A city councilor, apparently representing various Jewish interests in his distrcit, talks to the DAs office and says he wants to office to honor the right of return. Then they find out that Eli was adopted, and his mother was Irish Catholic, not Jewish. Eli's status as a Jew is then called into question.

In an unusual twist, Carmichael goes to a "Rabbinical Court" in Brooklyn which settles disputes in the Jewish community. If they determine Eli was not really Jewish, then perhaps the Israeli authorities will return Eli to US/NYC custody. The rabbis decide that the "standard for conversion" has not been met and that Eli showed no evidence of living a Jewish life. This decision greatly angers Eli's dad, who tells them to "drop dead" and storms out.

The DAs make a deal with Sal, who pleads to Man I, 10-20 years, and agrees to testify against Eli.

Eli's trial begins (42 minutes in to the episode). Things are going ok for McCoy, but really take off when the son of the victim, who has known Eli for a long time, rolls on Eli and says how Eli intimidated and threatened him. Now that it looks like McCoy has a conviction wrapped up, the city councilor returns and asks if Eli can serve his sentence in Israel. No problem there. In a big Family Conference Room Meeting, Eli admits to his disappointed parents that he committed the crime.

14.12 Payback

In this episode (14.12), the murder of a small-time bookie leads to some tension between a man and his nephew struggling for control for their branch of the mob, and a real estate agent with an unusual part-time job. Briscoe and Green investigate.

The episode begins with the discovery of the victim, Jerry Tortino, in a horse's stable. The uniformed police officer who greets Briscoe and Green offers some off-the-cuff crime scene analysis. Everyone's a crime scene specialist now, Green cracks. Briscoe turns to the horse, hoping for a witness, and says to an employee, "His name's not Mr. Ed, is it?" They learn that Tortino used to be a big bookie, but his business had diminished in recent years after some time in jail. The ME points out a crescent-shaped burn mark on the man's neck, indicating that his killer had branded him in some way, perhaps as a signature. They learn that prior to his conviction, Tortino had ratten out some people in the Misucci crime family. (The Misuccis are always mentioned in mob episodes.) Specifically, he had rolled out someone named Righetti. The dets visit the Righetti's nephew at his social club. He's defiant but good-humored, offering them some food. He says that unless they have something to charge him with, they should "take it under the arches," meaning leave. Briscoe says in response, "Where do they get the lingo?" I'm not sure, but I think that Righetti was referencing a scene from Taxi Driver in which a cab dispatcher tells De Niro to "take it under the arches" if he has a problem with the way things are done.

Anyway, it turns out that NYPD has someone deeply undercover with Righetti's crew, and he was even at the social club when the dets visited. The UC tells them where to find Righetti: an apartment on Mott Street (in Chinatown). They find him there, being attended to by a visiting nurse, and sitting in his shower, fully clothed, with an umbrella over his head. They bring him in for questioning, and he appears to remember Briscoe from the very old days, and even remembers what he used to drink, and that his wife had red hair. The nurse tells them that Righetti is not really crazy and that she got a good deal on an apartment from a contact of Righetti's, a real estate agent named Stillman. Stillman is the same guy who helped Tortino find his apartment. Hm.

Briscoe wants a wiretap on Righetti to see if there's a connection him and the murder, and to see if he's really crazy. A sympathetic judge gives them a the warrant. The wiretap yields a conversation between Righetti and Stillman about an apartment on East 79th. Van Buren says, wait, we had a murder last night on E 79th. Same building and everything. They begin to suspect that the conversation was a coded request to have someone killed on E79th, and that the real estate agent was arranging the hits. The detectives talk to the detective investigating that murder, and learn that the victim there also had a brand on his neck. Hm!

McCoy visits with an assistant US Attorney. It turns out that her husband was the victim in this second murder. It looks like he was killed as a message to her, since she was involved as the prosecutor in his case. She tells McCoy she wants Stillman convicted. They arrest him. His lawyer, Mr Margolis, shows up and makes a motion to exclude the wiretap, since it had nothing to do with the crime, and the tap was supposed to be to get evidence against Righetti, not Stillman. The judge agrees and tosses the tape.

Southerlyn dons some jeans and talks to the undercover detective in the park. The DAs learn that Stillman has a safe deposit box. They open it and find a money clip with an embossed crescent on it and a lighter: ad hoc branding iron. Even so, Stillman refuses to make a deal.

The trial begins (41 minutes into the ep) and the defense argues that different weapons could have been used to commit the crimes. Angry at the defendant's defiant stand, the US Atty marches out of the trial. The case isn't going well, so McCoy makes an offer to Stillman. Around the same time, the UC detective tells them where to find the gun. They theorize that the Righetti nephew knew he was being wire-tapped when he revealed the location of the gun, and that he did so to get his uncle convicted of the crime, so that he could have all the power to himself. They arrest the elder Righetti, finding him in a bathroom and sneakers. Briscoe cracks that the guys from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy will want to have a word with him.

Once they pick up Righetti, another US Atty stops by and wants the DA's office to hold off on prosecuting Righetti, because they want to make a deal with him so they can reel in even bigger fish. McCoy is pissed, but Branch is ready to do what the US Atty wants. Branch orders McCoy to release Righetti and withdraw his offer to Stillman. Branch and McCoy get in a huge fight, raising their voices and everything. It is maybe the biggest intra-office fight I've ever seen on the show. McCoy does as he's told, however, and Stillman can't believe the offer is being withdrawn. Shortly thereafter, McCoy is called to another crime scene: Righetti and his nurse have been murdered.

The episode is notable primarily because of the big fight between McCoy and Branch. In a way, the tension between them is a parallel to the tension between the two Righettis.

I should point out that this episode features a mob boss pretending to be crazy, a ploy ripped not only from real life (see the case of Vincent "Chin" Gigante) but also from a previous episode of L&O.

12.10 Prejudice

In this episode (12.10), a black publishing executive is murdered, apparently because of a fight over a cab with a guy who turns out to be a sort of white-collar white supremacist. Briscoe and Green investigate.

The episode begins with an incompatible couple on a first date talking about how incompatible they are. She likes tofu, he doesn't, etc. They find a dead body down some stairs by an apartment. He's ID'd as Thomas Reddick, the CEO of a prominent publishing company that specializes in publications for African-Americans. When he learns this, Green says, "He's on the other side of the camera now." Briscoe retorts, "He's on the other side, period."

The dets talks to a security guard at Reddick's office, who tells him he saw Reddick standing next to a cab talking to a white guy. Talking to forensics, they learn Reddick was killed by a Glock. They check to see if any stockholders in the company might be angry with him over some impending business deals. They talk to one guy, an antiques dealer, who was upset that Reddick was bringing the company into the soft-core porn industry, but he wasn't so angry he'd kill him. They also learn that a model was suing Reddick's company because they were going to publicly print some pictures they had assured her would be distributed to a small private audience. Her boyfriend is a suspect for a while because he was so angry at the way his girlfriend was treated, but he turns out to be innocent. The bf's friend, though, says he went to the building with the bf and saw two white guys talking to Reddick next to a cab -- a minivan cab.

Briscoe and Green run down all the minivan cabs in the city, and find the one. He says that he was told by the two white guys to follow the other cab. The cabbie says the guys in the cab were discussing a red-headed barmaid who one of the guys was interested in. They track down this girl, since the bar was right there, and she happens to have a business car belonging to one of the guys. The dets talk to him, and he says that his friend got in a fight with Reddick over a cab. Van Buren's response to hearing this: "A black man finally gets a cab in this city and he gets killed for it."

The friend points the detectives to the murderer, Ray Burrows. Burrows is an arrogant prick, and quickly reveals himself to be a racist with his comments to Green. They find matching bullets and the Glock at his apartment.

It turns out that Burrows has a rather extensive history of racist behavior, and they track down some of his former co-workers to learn more. McCoy wants to file an indictment for a hate crime. The dfesne attorney, recurring character Al Archer, says he's going to use an insansity defense: he says his client suffered from paranoid delusions due to his extreme racism. In other words, he's arguing that racism is a mental defect. In responding, McCoy references another case involving so-called "black rage," in which the defense argued that the defendant, a black man, committed a crime because of all the pressures of being black. (It sounds like he is referring to the case in an episode called Bounty, which was a take on the Jayson Blair case, but that episode came much later. I'll check later to see what he's talking about.)

Anyway, the rest of the episode is about whether racism is really a mental illness. DA Nora Lewin says maybe it is, while Skoda talks to Burrows to see just how messed up he is. Burrows tells all kinds of racist stories and seems like a complete sociopath. Skoda, sporting a mustache, tells McCoy, "He's one scary dude" but he's not insane. Meanwhile, Lewin says we need treatment options for racism! McCoy argues that when hatred becomes an insanity defense, no one will ever be guilty of anything again.

At trial, an expert from Yale testifies that racism is a mental disorder. McCoy in his closing says that the central issue in the case is accountability for one's actions. Verdict comes back guilty.

L&O usually does a great job dealing with race and racism, but this episode is far less subtle than most, and so is a bit disappointing. The show is much better when it deals with the nuances of racism, but this one is so direct and explicit that the defendant becomes almost like a cartoon instead of a human. It weakens the quality of the episode.

9.8 Punk

In this episode (9.8), which I feel like I have seen and written about a million times, a young female convict arranges the murder of a male corrections officer who raped her repeatedly and threatened her child. Briscoe and Curtis investigate, though Abbie Carmichael plays a prominent role.

The episode begins with two kids playing football in a small paved park. One kid discovers the victim's body near the bathroom in the park. The man was shot with a 9mm pistol. They learn he was a corrections officer, and they talk to cons who may have had a problem with the victim, Charlie Tyner. One con they talk to says that Tyner was corrupt. Another convict, a female, says Tyner used to treat certain females as favorites. I wonder why. They learn about another convict Tyner dealt with, Alice Minelli, who once refused a drug test. Tyner had accessed her medical records shortly thereafter. They talk to Minelli, who is aggressive and defiant. She's a member of the street/prison gang the Paganos, and is angry at Carmichael, who she says has a vendetta against her. It turns out that the reason Minelli is in prison to begin with is that she wouldn't make a deal with Carmichael on a drug offense, and she refused to roll on others, so Carmichael sent her away. Briscoe and Curtis talk to one of the leaders of the Paganos, a guy named Pacheco. As they talk to him, he starts towards his toolbox and then moves away. Curtis notes this, and checks out the toolbox. Inside, they find the murder weapon. Pacheco takes off, but Curtis quickly catches him and punches him in the face to subdue him. They talk to his sister, a prison friend of Minelli's, who very reluctantly gives them a little bit more info. Minelli is indicted for Murder 1. At her arraignment, she demands that Carmichael be taken off the case, but that motion is denied.

Recurring character Danielle Melnick comes in as Minelli's defense counsel, and reveals more details about the relationship between Minelli and Tyner. Meanwhile, Minelli suffers a miscarriage. She was pregnant! Guess who the father was. We learn that Tyner had arranged for a fellow CO to give a condom to Minelli's young daughter in the park, telling her to tell her mom about it. Melnick, disgusted by everything she's heard from her client, tells McCoy "I'll put the system on trial."

Back on the Pacheco trial, Pacheco gets the gun suppressed, and the case against him is dismissed. McCoy prepares to cut a deal with Minelli because of the setback, and Carmichael is mad at him.

At Minelli's trial, Carmichael cross-examines her, and she discusses how she was repeatedly raped by Tyner. She says she never reported it because she was ashamed. She demands of Carmichael, "Haven't you ever been raped?" This provokes a silent, but visible, reaction from Carmichael. The jury is out deliberating for three days when Abbie tells McCoy to make a deal with Minelli. How about Attempted Man I, and she testifies against Pacheco? Well, how about I just tell you where he got the gun instead. OK.

As the episode ends, Carmichael tells McCoy that she was raped by a 3rd year law student when she was a freshman in college. She starts crying and says she blamed herself. End of episode.

Quick casting note: the sister of Pacheco the Pagano is played by Karina Arroyave, who went on to play Jamey Farrell, the hot computer tech on the first season of 24.

13.19 Seer

In this unusual episode (13.19), a man claiming to have psychic visions is a suspect in the murder of his attractive female neighbor. Briscoe and Green investigate.

The episode begins with a couple having an argument in the kitchen of their apartment. The woman is about to throw the man's keys out the window when she looks out and sees the body of a woman next to a dumpster several floors below. The victim is well-dressed, and there is a foot-print near the body, apparently from the murderer. Briscoe and Green check in with the annoying forensics guy, Beck, who has been showing up almost as much as Medical Examiner Rogers lately, and Beck, since he knows everything, tells them all about the footprint and how the murderer's feet are pronated and so on. This guy is like the Detective Goran of the original series...there is no obscure area of knowledge that he doesn't know inside and out. This sort of caricature, in my opinion, doesn't belong on a relatively realistic drama like L&O.

Anyway, they learn the victim's name is Rachel Caldwell from East 83rd Street. When they visit her apartment, they meet her neighbor, Tim Grayson, who is sort of creepy. They learn from the ME that there was an attempted sexual assault on her, and she was hit in the head with a metal bar or similar object. The detectives talk to her friend Lee Ann Parker, who says they were hanging out a a bar, Mavericks on 73rd (a real bar, by the way). She says that she and the victim liked to go to "Tart" parties, sexually-provocative events that were usually sponsored and controlled by women. The latest was at Plato's Retreat, a club downtown. They talk to a woman named Adrian who sponsored the party. They speak to her in her art gallery, right underneath a giant photo of a woman's breast.

To further investigate, Briscoe and Green go to the party that night to see what they can find out. While there, a woman falls into Briscoe's arms. They learn that the victim was talking to Geoffrey Viceroy, a lawyer, at least that's what his business card says. The dets track down Viceroy and see that he is an old man in a wheelchair, who doesn't get to sex parties at clubs, obviously. Someone stole his business cards. He says he got them from the firm's print shop. Guess who works upstairs at the print shop? Surprise! It's Tim Grayson, the creepy neighbor! Although this "reveal" makes perfect sense given the structured nature of L&O story telling, it's still a bit of a surprise when you see it's him.

Grayson even has a photo of the victim on his desk at work, so it looks like he's a little obsessed, and he has one of those madonna/whore complexes that creates so many problems in the sexually deviant: "Why would she dress like that?" he asks. Once he's in for questioning, Grayson drops the next bomb: he says he had a "sense" something was wrong. He says he had a vision of her injured in an alley. As Green begins to get him to talk, Briscoe, who had been playing "bad cop" says mock-eerily, "I see a cup of coffee," and exits, as Green gets Grayson to tell him the details of the crime.

Grayson and Green head to the crime scene where Grayson walks through everything he says he saw in his vision. He even locates the murder weapon, which for some reason CSU had missed, even though it was in plain view right next to where the body was found. Meanwhile, Briscoe and Southerlyn search Grayson's apartment, where she mispronounces "Feng Shui" but they find some shoes that match the prints found at the scene.

They arrest Grayson, and his defense attorney, Maters, quotes Hamlet to McCoy ("There are more things on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy". He acknowledge he catches the reference, and Masters follows it up with a motion to suppress everything Grayson said, since he didn't know he was a suspect. The judge agrees, suppressing everything but the shoeprint and the shoes.

Skoda questions Grayson and finds him delusional, and probably experienced these visions as a way of distancing himself from the guilt he felt over killing the girl.

At trial, one of the defense tactics is to ask about the seductive nature of the victim's outfit. This is admissible? What the victim was wearing is relevant to why she was killed? What is this, 1984? Another tactic is to bring up a supposed psychic who is semi-legitimate because he can predict the future and has been hired by Japanese corporations to do just that. Do the script writers not see a difference between having a vision of what's happening now/in the past and a clairvoyant who sees the future? It seems to me the two are unrelated. Anyway, McCoy shreds the psychic, but it's unclear why he even had to bother.

McCoy introduces telephoto pictures Grayson had taken of the victim. It's clear he was stalking her. In the midst of cross-examination, Grayson confesses to McCoy that he killed her. McCoy tells the defense counsel he's never had anyone confess to him like that in the middle of a trial. (I'm not sure whether this is supported by previous episodes.) The defense counsel gets Skoda to testify that Grayson has a need to please authority figures, and he might have confesses to both the police and McCoy just to please them.

Anyway, all this becomes irrelevant because the victim's friend, Lee Ann Parks, said something in her testimony that was inconsistent with her previous statement, and consequently, SS suspects that Parks is a lesbian and had feelings for the victim. It turns out, rather ridiculously, that Parks is the real murderer, and that Grayson had merely watched the whole thing happen and repressed it. What nonsense.

12.7 Myth of Fingerprints

In this episode (12.7), the brother of a man jailed for 12 years for a crime he didn't commit is the suspect in the real killer's death. Lt. Van Buren was the original lead detective in the case that led to the conviction of the wrong man. Green and Briscoe try to straighten it all out.

The episode appears to be based in part on the case of Joyce Gilchrist, an Oklahoma police chemist who falsified evidence and sent innocent people to prison. The episode begins with some Staten Island-y party girls discovering the body of the victim, James Foley, in his apartment. The murder weapon, apparently, was the victim's large tv set, which landed on his head with some force. Forensics reports that there are 53 sets of fingerprints in the apartment, which means a headache for the detectives. They focus on a different angle at first, looking into a custody dispute between Foley and the mother of his child. The mother's new boyfriend has a manslaughter conviction of his record, but the boyfriend sends the detectives in a new direction when he tells them that Foley was dealing drugs. The detectives look into it and see that Foley was once busted with a large quanitity of drugs, but walked away from the charges. A narcotics detective who worked on the case tells Briscoe and Green that Foley flipped and rolled on 6 other dealers. There's a new motive for his murder! They visit one of the cons Foley put away at Sing Sing. The con, named Martin, tells them that Foley told him he once killed somebody. They look into it, and find that the murder he had supposedly committed had been solved, and that someone else -- a man named Campbell -- was convicted of it. Looking through the file, Green notices that the lead witness in the case was unreliable (because of a criminal record) and that, more importantly, the lead detective on the case was none other than Anita Van Buren, his current boss and lieutenant.

Van Buren recalls the case and says the Campbell had been spotted at the scene. The detectives learn that Campbell's brother, Luke, had visited Campbell and Martin in prison. Perhaps he got the info from Martin about the Foley, and took it upon himself to kill him? It's beginning to seem like it.

The detectives confront Luke, who denies any knowledge, but then his prints turn up in the victim's apartment. They arrest him, and Briscoe tells him, "Prints don't lie." "Everyone lied," he shoots back, referring to his brother's conviction. Under pressure, Luke confesses to Foley's murder, saying he went to talk to him, but things got out of hand, and he pushed him and the tv fell on his head.

Before they can bring Luke to trial, they have to straighten out the facts of the original murder. Was Campbell indeed falsely convicted? Southerlyn and Van Buren talk to the original eye-witness, who was working as a prostitute at the time. Having begun her new life with a husband and everything, she is reluctant to talk. Their quest into the past also suffers a blow because a lot of forensic evidence has been lost since the original trial, due to several moves and a flood. So that leaves the forensics tech who originally matched Campbells fingerprints to those found on the murder weapon. The tech and Van Buren have been friends for many years, so Van Buren delicately asks her about her work on the case. McCoy says he wants the tech's original files sent to the FBI for analysis. FBI forensics tells Southerlyn that the fingerprints only matched in 6 points, which is comparatively few, and the NYPD tech should have pointed this out during the investigation.

The implications of the forensic tech's sloppiness are far reaching, and DA Nora Lewin points this out. She orders an investigation into all the cases the tech worked on. The FBI determines that 7 out of 20 cases they looked at contained "false positives": the tech had exaggerated the quality of evidence against the people in many of the cases she worked on. Uh oh.

This puts Van Buren on the defensive, both because of her friendship with the forensic tech, and also because, she says, the case "made her" and got her noticed in the department. Without it, she doesn't think she would have become a lieutenant. The FBI's review of the evidence leads to a new suspect/accomplice in the original murder, a man named Russo. Lewin tells her staff to go after both Russo and the fingerprint technician. Van Buren, Green, and Briscoe arrest the fingerprint tech. McCoy argues that her lies led to the death of an innocent person in prison who had been convicted because of her testimony.

McCoy wants to charge her with Manslaughter 2. So let me ask you something: sending someone to jail has the forseeable consequence that the person will be killed? According to McCoy, yes. Give me a break!

Anyway, somewhat unbelievably, the jury returns a guilty verdict against the technician. Van Buren is emotional, and Briscoe tells her she's still a good cop, etc., etc. Van Buren visits the convicted technician in jail, who rips her a new one and tells her that she, Van Buren, is complicit in the whole results-based mentality, too, and that this leads to false convictions.

13.8 Asterisk

In this episode (13.8), a baseball star is the lead suspect in the murder of his limo driver. Why'd he do it? Briscoe and Green investigate. The episode loosely mirrors the case of Jayson Williams, the former basktetball star currently on trial for the apparently accidental killing of his own limo driver.

The episode begins with some young women picking up garbage in Central Park as part of their community service for a minor drug offense. As they talk, one of them discovers the body of the victim, whose neck has been snapped and is who is lacking a wallet or ID. All that's left is a scrap of paper with a to do list on it which Green decodes and focuses on the last item, "flowers for Susie." The victim also has a large tattoo of his dragon on his back. They stop by a tattoo parlor to determine who might have created the tattoo, but the proprietor says the artist is dead. They then check out another of the victim's tattoo's -- Japanese characters -- with a female Japanese detective, who tells them it says "Ike" (pronounced "ee-kay") which means both "life" and is a nickname for "Ikedo." Green puts two and two together and calls up directory assistance, asking for "Susie Ikedo." Bingo! It's the victim's girlfriend.

Susie tells the detectives that her bf had had some rough times in his life, but was now clean and straight. She tells them that he was working as a limo driver. They check the limo company, and the owner tells them that the victim had been out the previous night driving to Atlantic City with Kevin Seleeby, a young baseball star whom both Briscoe and Green apparently admire. They question Seleeby who seems cooperative. Back at the precinct, Lt. Van Buren chides the detectives for their hero worship of Seleeby and tells them to take a closer look at him.

The detectives check back with the girlfriend who tells them about a former meth dealer called "Doc" who the victim used to associate with. They visit him. He turns out to be a chemistry Ph. D. who has given up his meth lab in favor of a steroid lab. It begins to look like he was manufacturing steroids which the victim was selling to Seleeby. There's your motive, apparently.

The victim's limo, which had been missing, turns up, but is clean of forensic evidence. However, the odometer shows it had only travelled 10 miles, obviously too short a distance to account for a trip to Atlantic City. Looks like Seleeby lied to them.

They check in with Seleeby's agent and also his cousin, both of whom were with Seleeby the night of the incident. Their stories match down to the minute, a bit too convenient Briscoe and Green thing. Even the bartender's story matches theirs, and the detectives think that Seleeby got to everyone and asked them to change their stories. But a doorman at a hotel the trio visited tells the detectives that Seleeby arrived in a cab, not a limo. They bring in the cousin and the agent and question them separately. It's not long before the cousin rolls on Seleeby and tells what really happened: Seleeby had killed the driver for some reason, and called the cousin and the agent to help him cover it up. The detectives theorize that the victim was trying to blackmail Seleeby by threatening to go public with his steroid use, but they don't know for sure.

They arrest Seleeby (30 minutes into the ep), and he retains Alan Fenwick as his counsel. Fenwick and McCoy have a conversation about various professional athletes who have gone on trial for serious crimes -- OJ, Ray Lewis, Ray Carruth, Allan Iverson, etc. But the defense counsel says that his client is not guilty because of "steroid induced psychosis."

Skoda interviews Seleeby to see if this is true, and comes away sympathetic, though he does not conclude that Seleeby was actually psychotic. McCoy and Southerlyn still can't find a motive, however, until the defense counsel accidentally includes an internal memo in a psych. evaluation report they send to McCoy's office. Southerlyn takes the information from the memo -- a decision not to have someone testify -- and learns that Seleeby is gay and was involved in a relationship with the editor of a gay magazine. The new theory of the crime is that the victim somehow knew of this relationship and threatened to blackmail Seleeby with the info, so Seleeby killed him. Unfortunately for McCoy, crusty old Judge Bradley suppresses the memo and all the info that came from it, so McCoy is still left without a motive.

The trial begins (at 45 minutes in) and it doesn't go very well because McCoy has no motive. He tries to get the chemistry Ph. D. to testify, but the judge won't allow it because Fenwick tells the judge McCoy is going to argue that the victim was using Seleeby's steroid use to blackmail Seleeby, an argument McCoy knows to be false. Southerlyn gets mad at McCoy for attempting this back-door strategy, but McCoy makes it up to her by delivering a fine closing argument which results in a guilty verdict for Seleeby.

Genius

In this episode (