The Ledger

3.9 Point of View: Lennie Briscoe's First Episode, Phil Cerreta's Last Episode

Lennie Briscoe makes his first appearance in this episode (3.9) about a woman who apparentl killed a man because feared she was going to be raped. Phil Cerreta (Paul Sorvino, in what is essentially a guest-starring appearance) also makes his final appearance in the series.

The episode begins (as many early episodes do) with two cops on patrol, talking about something benign. They drive by a couple walking down the street. There appears to be some tension between the couple, but they keep driving. Soon enough, they get a call to a shooting. The victim is the man from the couple they just drove by. Logan is already on the scene, and before you see him, you can hear Briscoe scolding someone about moving something. Cut to Briscoe emerging from a cloud of steam (how's that for an entrance!) and he replies to questions as to why he didn't respond to his beeper by saying sharply, "What I was doing, I don't wear a beeper." They talk to the patrolling cops who deny they saw anything unusual. Briscoe is brusque and observant at the crime scene, and he's not wearing a tie. He notes that the male cop had donut powder on his shirt.

They talk to the bartender at the bar where the couple was coming from. He says he didn't know either of them. Briscoe comments on Logan's jinx: his previous two partners (Greevey and Cerreta) were shot. They still have no idea on the victim, but some tickets in his pocket lead them to a boxing gym in Brooklyn, where they get an ID on the victim. His name is Tommy Duff. They learn he was a liquor and cigarette distributor. They go to his office, which is run down. They revisit the bar where he was, and the bartender reluctantly tells them that in fact he did know Duff and had a connection to a mobster named Jimmy Scanlon. They talk to Scanlon who denies Duff was a "bagman" for him, i.e., a man who carries money from place to place.

Down at the precinct, Logan gets mad at Briscoe for using Cerreta's desk. Meanwhile, Briscoe casually throws around a few ethnic slurs and says that Irish people kill for money. Logan asks Cragen when Cerreta is going to return, but of course, that doesn't look like it's going to happen.

They revisit the cops on patrol who saw the couple. The female cop admits they saw the victim and the woman and there was tension between them. Briscoe and Logan have lunch at Patsy's, a famous Manhattan pizzeria. Briscoe leaves without paying. Logan questions him about this (the same thing happens in Det. Curtis' first episode, by the way), and Briscoe says he doesn't pay because the guy in there will trust him if he thinks he's corrupt.

Logan visits Cerreta in the hospital. Cerreta tells him he's done as a cop. He'll be working the administrative desk at the 110th precinct. Cerreta's wife Elaine arrives.

Logan and Briscoe visit an accounting firm to interview a witness. The accountant is very nervous. He says he saw Duff and the woman (who they still haven't identified) kissing. A female witness says she saw the woman: she was blonde with very good makeup, salon quality. Briscoe says something about catching a guy in the shower with his first wife.

They visit various salons and show Polaroids of Duff. At one salon, they find the woman they're looking for: she works there. Her name is Mary Kastrinsky. They take her into custody for killing Duff (30').

Here lawyer is the old-time feminist recurring character Lanie Stieglitz, who I find quite annoying. (Thank God she's only appeared twice.) Forensics matches her fingerprints to one on the bullet or shell casing. She says that Duff tried to rape her. Schiff isn't sure it's a good case. Forensics says she shot him from 4 feet away, meaning that she could have just run instead of shooting.

Olivet interviews Kastrinsky. Olivet backs her up, but Stone doesn't. At trial (41'), the bartnender says that Kastrinsky asked him for the time repeatedly, which indicates that she was waiting for someone, and didn't just meet Duff by chance as she had claimed. Olivet is called by the defense, instead of by the prosecution. Olivet, you may recall, was raped in the episode "Helpless." Schiff tells Stone to bring this up on cross-examination and not to warn her about it beforehand. Stone reluctantly pursues this strategy because he needs to discredit her testimony in support of the defendant. Olivet admits that her own rape could have influenced her testimony about the defendant.

Kastrinsky's landlord says that she just bought her unit. She says she did so using money that was a gift from Sean McCarrick. McCarrick is connected to Scanlon. They then generate a new theory of the crime: Kastrinsky was carrying out a paid hit on behalf of Scanlon.

They confront the victim's wife, who appears to have been involved. Stone talks to Stieglitz to try to get her to abandon this feminist defense of her client, since it looks like a hit was involved. Swayed by Stone, Stieglitz rather preposterously agrees not to make a closing argument, which is one of the most ridiculous things that has happened in the history of the show. Here's this supposedly great and legendary lawyer, and she's denying her own client counsel in a murder trial? Give me a break. Kastrinsky says her own husband was abusive, and Scanlon did her a favor and killed him, so she owed him one. Scanlon is arrested for arranging Duff's murder. (59')

In the epilogue, Stone and Olivet make peace. She tells him, "Sometimes you have an awful way of being right," admitting that she, too, was fooled by Kastrinsky's story. Logan and Briscoe also make peace, and Logan tells him to use the desk. He puts the famous Lennie Briscoe nameplate in its proper location.

Here's a screen shot of Lennie Briscoe's first appearance on camera: emerging from a cloud of steam as he arrives, tie-less, at the crime scene. Opening dialogue (spoken from off camera): "Put it back," to a uniformed officer who has picked up a bullet.

Here's a screen shot of Cerreta's last moments on screen. His last bit of dialogue: "I told Mikey about the 110." He's referring to his new administrative job at the 110th precinct. Cerreta was shot in the stomach in the previous episode, Prince of Darkness.

Here's something new: I teach high school English, and to help my kids with their listening comprehension skills, I have them take notes on tv shows while they're watching, and draw up an outline of what they watched. By coincidence, one of my students outlined this episode. So here you go:

Law and Order
Outline:
Man reported dead.
Cops and detective arrive at scene.
The detectives look for witnesses.
Talk to many people who knew Tommy.
Goes to company where he used to work.
The dt investigates the cops that were on the scene.
They found the girl that Tommy was fiddling with in the bar.
Cops make ID.
The lady says that she was going to get raped.
The dt find out that it was a hit.
They arrest Scanlon and give him 25 years.
The case goes to court.
The lawyers settle outside at the court.
They put him in jail.
The lady gets 15.

Notes:
a man down report. tommy.
briscoe argues with police officer
find dead body.
gets new partner.
the dt looks for witnesses.
the two dt discuss the murder.
tommy: the dt goes to brooklyn for more information about money.
tommy was a good friend.
tommy sells beer to bars. dt found out.
they go back to the bar.
jimmy scanlon is introduced.
they go to scanlon to the company where they get the information.
briscoe interrogates the two cops. they tell about what happened that night.
mike goes to see phil [ceretta, his injured ex-parnter, in the hospital. -adm]
they go to a witness, tells them what happened.
they go to another place to get information.
they found the girl who was at the murder.
they make a positive id.
marion shot tommy during attempted rape.
find this out and prosecute her.
they talk about whether to take the case to court.
the case was taking to court, and discussing the science.
they continued to investigate.

3.14 Promises to Keep

In this muddled episode (3.14), a female psychiatrist manipulates a male patient into killing his girlfriend to recover a diary which details his sexual affair with the psychiatrist. Briscoe and Logan investigate, and Stone and Robinette try to determine whether the psychiatrist is criminially responsible.

The episode begins with a middle-aged couple jogging in the park at night. They are discussing the lack of safety in the park and the man's "eating disorder" when the man notices the body of a woman. Briscoe and Logan are called to the scene. Items from the woman's purse are recovered all they way down the western edge of Central Park, but it appears she wasn't mugged, because she was strangled, not beaten or stabbed. They do not, however, find her keys anywhere, which suggests someone may want to rob her apartment. They visit her apartment, which has indeed been meticulously robbed. They interview her parents and her boyfriend, who have arrived at the morgue. The boyfriend says he was supposed to meet her that night, but grew concerned when she didn't show up, and called the parents to see where she was. [Since it turns out later he killed her, why would he call her parents?]

They talk to the couple's psychiatrist Dr Meade (played by veteran actress Lindsay Crouse). She tells the detectives that the victim had a drinking problem that sometimes led her to flirt with men, so maybe one of those men killed her. The victim's co-workers tell them, however, that her husband once showed up at the victim's place of work, a hospital, and was so crazy, she took him upstairs to the psych ward. They interrogate Danny, the boyfriend, using the old good cop/bad cop technique. Logan makes some good progress with him, and he gradually admits that he killed his girlfriend because he was trying to recover a diary. He also says that he was having a sexual affair with Dr Meade. He says he "needs" her.

Olivet examines Danny to determine his culpability and state of mind. It's apparent he was involved in a controlling affair with the psychiatrist and he was utterly dependent on her. The diary was his, and it documented his relationship with Dr Meade. He says he doesn't have it. The actor who plays Danny turns in a performance in this scene is pretty over-the-top and almost guffaw-inducing.

Stone decides he wants to try to charge Meade for inspiring the murder. Olivet interviews Meade about her relationship with Danny, and the scene turns into a real battle of the brains, as they turn questions back on each other, discuss different methods (e.g., Adler's, which Olivet doesn't like), and so on. Olivet and Stone try to convince Schiff that Meade is indeed criminally responsible, but Schiff doesn't feel a prosecution based on "mind control" is a good idea.

They need more evidence. They check the phone records of Dr Meade and see a call was made from her office to the victim's parents after the murder, so they think that Meade and Danny are complicit in the murder. They tape a visit between Danny and Dr Meade at Rikers. He gets her to admit an affair, during a ridiculous scene where they start talking baby talk to each other. (Lindsay Crouse and baby talk do not meld well.) They arrest Meade on her way out of Rikers (42 mins). Despite all the effort, the judge suppresses the tape, because Meade had an expectation of privacy (in an open prisoners' visitation room?!). The DAs need the diary, which Olivet gets Danny to admit he has, and he turns it over.

Meade's trial begins (45 mins). In the middle of the trial, we learn that Danny tried to kill himself at Rikers. Meade, on the stand, admits the affair with Danny, and -- preposterously -- says she had sex with Meade as part of his therapy, to show him that he could be loved in a giving manner. Things aren't going well for her, however, and she eventually pleads to Criminally Negligent Homicide, with an attached sentenced of 5 years. The ADA's believe this will lead to Danny being sentenced to time at a psychiatric hospital, but the judge vetoes that idea and sentences him to prison for 4-12 years. He is dragged from the courtroom, looking and calling out pleadingly with Dr Meade.

Overall, this episode is not very satisfying. Most of the plot makes no sense -- why did Meade have an affair with this guy? Why did Danny call the girl's parents from Dr Meade's office either before or after he killed the victim?

Original Series Marathon on Today

Don't forget that TNT is running an L&O marathon all day today. Starts at 8 am.

Here is a list of the episodes that will be shown.

13.7 Open Season

Danielle Melnick, the defense attorney who is a longtime recurring character on L&O, gets shot in this episode (13.7) after she defends a member of a radical militia group already facing trial for killing another attorney.

The episode begins in the courtroom as a verdict is read. Darnell Marbury is acquitted of Attempted Murder in the first degree for the shooting of a police officer. There is pandemonium in the courtroom. Afterwards, the defense attorney, Vance Grodie, and his friends gather in a bar where they celebrate. Grodie steps outside for a cigarette, and shots ring out. His friends rush outisde, and find him dead. Briscoe and Green arrive on the scene and recognize Grodie and learn he's been shot 5-6 times. A witness says she saw a blue Chevy leaving the scene.

The detectives talk to Grodie's friends in the bar. The friends believe Grodie was shot by a vengeful cop, and idea that makes sense to Green but not Briscoe. One friend says he spoke to a guy in the bathroom who was saying vicious things about Grodie immediately prior to the shooting. The bartended gives them a description of this guy. Medium everything, polo shirt, windbreaker.

The detectives visit Marbury's victim, Officer Chris Wilson, who is now in a wheelchair and extremely bitter. Green remains the only one who thinks a cop might be responsible for Grodie's shooting. He says he's tired of "the blue wall" that springs up everytime there's a shooting like this one.

They talk to a co-worker of Grodie's who explain that Grodie loved being a defense attorney because it was a chance to represent the people no one else wanted to. She says he didn't care about money. Briscoe and Green want to review all of Grodie's cases to see who would be upset with him, but the co-worker things the detectives are overlooking the obvious. Briscoe tells a story about a murder case he worked many years ago. The victims -- the Lippman's -- were killed, and Grodie had Briscoe on the stand and made him sound like he was solving cases in between shots of booze. The defendant was acquitted and then shot some people shortly thereafter. Briscoe is still upset, but Green says according to what he's heard, Briscoe was solving cases between drinks.

They next check out Wilson's old partner who gets mad at Green for suggested a cop -- namely him -- might be responsible. He refers to Grodie as "Oliver Wendell Sleazebag." (It's worth pointing out that modifying the name of a famous lawyer to insult someone is a fairly common joke on L&O. In fact, I believe the writers have even used the "Oliver Wendell [something]" formula before. Continuing to work this angle, Green and Briscoe check out the log of activity for the night. They clear the partner, but notice that a patrol car had been sent to ferry Wilson's brother from his home to the courthouse the night Grodie was killed. This is against regulations.

They talk to Wilson's brother, Kevin, and he fits the description of the man seen by the bartender and in the bathroom. They take him in for questioning, but insists he's innocent and went home drunk that night. He mentions he saw Grodie putting some phone numbers into a Palm Pilot, but the detectives don't remember seeing a Palm on the victim. This suggests the Palm was stolen from him, and that the people listed in it could be in danger.

One person in obvious danger from this is Darnell Marbury, the original defendant. The detectives visit his uncooperative mother, then trace the next phone call she makes, which is to an apartment in Harlem. They visit the apartment, where they figure Darnell is hanging out. He won't come to the door, but they talk to one of his buddies who tells them to wait at a fast food restaurant across the street. They do, and sure enough, Darnell slips in a short while later. After some indirect conversation, he hands them a pile of hate mail he received during the trial, then leaves.

The detectives read through the hatemail, and find one -- written with letters cut out of magazines -- that threatens Darnell and his lawyer. The nerdy forensics guy who is conveniently an expert on everything from molecular biology to typography traces the letters to three different magazines. He cross-references the subscription lists for these magazines for the area where the letter was postmarked, and comes up with one name. They visit this person, who turns out to be an old, slightly out-of-it lady. She says that when she's done with her magazines, "a nice young man" recycles them for her.

They immediately question this man, Julian Preuss, who is at first welcoming of the cops, but then becomes defensive when Green notices some militia-related publications and starts asking questions. Preuss drives a blue Chevy and is a member of a group called the American Patriot Union. He's taken in for questioning. He is accompanied by a lawyer who quickly realizes he's in over his head, since he's not a criminal lawyer, and advises his client to say nothing until he gets a new laywer.

The detectives talk to Southerlyn and decide it would be a good idea to check the offices of the American Patriot Union in NYC, but they don't have a warrant. They decide to send in Southerlyn, undercover, because she's blonde and blue-eyed. She goes to the office and starts talking to an enthusiastic female member of the APU. Southerlyn notices a box for a Palm Pilot in the trash can, and learns it is the same model as the one taken from Grodie. She makes a cell phone call, and the police arrive. Her theory is that Grodie had to purchase a new Palm Pilot so he could use the software to bypass the password on Grodie's Palm and download the contact information. (Nevermind that this software is freely available on Palm's website.) She tries explaining all of this to McCoy, who doesn't understand, but tells her to charge Preuss with Murder 2 if she feels she can make a case.

At his arraignment, Preuss has a new attorney, who Preuss instructs to "stand mute" when asked for a plea, so that jurisdiction is not implied. This doesn't last very long, however, and Preuss starts ranting about something and insulting his lawyer. This upsets the judge, who remands him and applies special administrative regulations which prohibit Preuss from having any contact with anyone besides his lawyer. This should theoretically prevent him from issuing any orders based on the contact information he downloaded from the Palm.

Apparently, this lawyer also realized he was in over his head, and his new counsel -- Danielle Melnick -- marches into McCoy's office and says that although she was friends with Grodie she is eager to defend Preuss because she feels his rights are being trampled. McCoy tells her he hopes that she never gave her home address to Grodie because she, along with everyone else in the Palm, could be in danger. He reiterates this point at a motion hearing where Melnick fails in her attempt to get the special regulations removed from her client's confinement.

McCoy and Melnick talk at a bar, where Melnick says, "I love you, Jack, but you're pissing me off." She leaves, and Southerlyn walks in with some scary news: a district attorney from Florida was murdered. He was a friend of Grodie's, and the address of the fishing cabin where he was found was in Grodie's Palm. This means that somehow the information got from Grodie to an accomplice, even though he had contact only with Melnick. As much as McCoy doesn't want to admit it, this suggests that Melnick somehow conveyed information outside of Rikers that led to the killing of this lawyer.

Southerlyn and Branch are eager to investigate Melnick, but McCoy, her friend for 20 years, is reluctant. They seek to bug the counsel room at Rikers, a move which is reluctantly approved by the trial judge, and they listen as Melnick and Preuss talk. Preuss writes an address on Melnick's legal pad, and she agrees to give the information to a contact of Preuss's on the outside. She does not seem to realize that the address belongs to someone Preuss wants killed, but she is prepared to willfully violate the judge's order not to allow Preuss to communicate with people besides her. This is painful to McCoy.

McCoy visits her at her house late at night, where he finds her wearing a silky night-robe. He tells her they know everything and she's in trouble. When she realizes that she's been played by Pruess and that she inadvertently contributed to the DA's murder, she's upset, but can't believe McCoy is going to go after her, and gives him the old "It's me, Jack" speech, but it does not good.

Melnick is arraigned (where we learn her middle name is "Rose"), and the judge removes her from defending Preuss. SS is aggressive at the bail hearing, and McCoy, in the background, frowns. But SS apparently telepathically gets McCoy's message, and does not seek bail for Melnick. She's released on her own recognizance. McCoy meets Melnick at a restaurant, and she tells him he should feel guilty for screwing their friendship. McCoy asks her to break privilege with Preuss, but she won't, admitting the irony of risking everything for the guy who killed one of her friends.

McCoy doesn't know what to do, but Branch tells him a story about his days in Yale Law School when he told a lie to a professor to help out a friend and everything worked out. He seems to be implying to McCoy that McCoy should lie to someone to help Melnick.

McCoy meets with Preuss and his lawyer at Rikers the next day, and tells the pair that Melnick rolled on Preuss about the DA's murder. The gambit works -- Preuss gets very upset at "that Jew lawyer" Melnick, and accepts a plea deal that will put him in jail for at least 12.5 years for the murder of Grodie. Part of the deal is that he testify that Melnick had no criminal intent, which means that she'll walk on the charges. He agrees, but is very upset.

Now, if you're thinking things through here, you might realize something that McCoy doesn't seem to: he just sold out his friend Melnick to this killer, and put her in the crosshairs of a guy who JUST ADMITTED TO KILLING ANOTHER DEFENSE ATTORNEY. Not very smart.

Nonetheless, McCoy, Branch, and SS are back at the office celebrating the way everything turned out when they get a phone call: Melnick has been shot.

SS and McCoy go down, and Briscoe and Green are already there. They have a suspect in custody -- the female worker from the American Patriotic Union, unsurprisingly -- and Melnick is being wheeled into an ambulance on a stretcher. She doesn't look like she's in very good shape. The camera follows her into the ambulance, and looks back through the windows and McCoy and the others, who are dubmfounded.

The episode is pretty good and interesting, but it seems silly that McCoy would unwittingly endanger Melnick like that. Also, it's not really clear why the militia group/Preuss would go after Grodie to begin with. These people are usually supporters of consitutional rights and go after over-zealous prosecutors, not defense attorneys. These flaws detract from the overall quality of the ep, but it's still pretty decent.

Melnick's shooting is referred to in at least one later episode (the following season), where she is seen on crutches.

14.1 Bodies

In this episode (14.1), a creepy cab driver turns out to be a serial killer, but after he's caught, he won't reveal where all his victims' bodies are. McCoy must decide how much to give up to find out where they are, and the killer's defense attorney gets too deeply involved in his client's affairs.

The episode begins with two guys peeing in an alley, getting their stories straight so their wives don't find out why they've been out so late. One of the guys looks down and sees a dead girl. The crime scene techs tells Briscoe and Green the girl has been dead a few hours, beaten and strangled to death.

Briscoe is in some ways distressed to find that the girl is carrying identification: this means he has to notify the parents right away, a process he dreads. The victim is 17 years old and named Sally. When the detectives give her parents the news, her mother is in complete denial and acts erratically, but her father straightens her out. The parents say Sally was out with her friend Katie. They talk to Katie who says that she was out with her much older boyfriend, a mechanic named Curt. They talk to Curt, who says he was indeed with Sally at a local bar, but they had a fight and parted. They confirm his alibi at the bar, in a rather poorly scripted scene (a barmaid refers to another busty girl as "silicon city." Groan.)

They check in with the ME for a more detailed report on the girl's condition. They learn that she had unusual cut marks on her body which matched a case in Brooklyn from 5 years ago when a girl named Holly was killed. They talk to the Brooklyn detective who worked the case. Det Goldstein meets them in Brooklyn (looks like Grand Army Plaza). The sketch of the suspect from that case matches the description the barmaid gave them of a guy seen lurking around Sally.) Looks like they have a suspect.

Beginning to suspect they have a serial offender, they place pins on a map representing each of the girls who have disappeared in NYC. There's tons of pins, but somehow they are able to discern some kind of pattern, as if enough of the missing girls disappeared because of the same person. Anyway, they check in with the families of the other missing girls, and show the sketch to them. One of the victim's brothers recognizes the guy in the sketch. They also realize that each of the girls disappeared across town from where they lived, leading them to believe that a cab driver might be involved. They just need to find white cabbies of a certain age and go from there.

They show the sketch to a manager at a cab company, and he IDs the person in the sketch as a driver named Bruner. They show up at his dingy, dark apartment, and question him cautiously. He's creepy as hell -- talking real slow, and making weird little movements. As he's talking, he reaches into his refrigerator and pulls out some cheese. He then grabs a big knife from his drying rack, ostensibly to slice his cheese, but Green isn't taking any chances, and -- in a very exciting split-second -- immediately pulls his gun and commands him to drop the knife. They take him into custody.

Green interrogates Bruner, and Bruner does his best "Kevin Spacey in Seven" impersonation. At a line-up, the barmaid identifies him, and he's arrested (off camera, 23 mins).

His brassy court-appointed defense attorney, Jessica Sheets, meets with McCoy, and tries to get the death penalty off the table. It's clear she's nervous however, and McCoy eventually discerns what the problem is: Bruner threatened her in some sadistic fashion. She wants to make a motion to be relieved of the case, and McCoy doesn't object.

Bruner gets a new lawyer, Jim Schwimmer from the Legal Aid Society. Schwimmer's a colorful guy and aggressively defends his client. Schwimmer is able to get the barmaid's ID thrown out on a technicality, but he does not dismiss the charges. McCoy and Southerlyn just need to find some more evidence.

Schwimmer meets with Southerlyn and gives her his whole biography. It's clear he's looking for a big case to launch him out of Legal Aid and into a high-profile corporate position. The prosecutors, Schwimmer, and Bruner meet at Rikers, and as Bruner is talking about the location of all the bodies in exchange for getting the death penalty taken off the table, McCoy asks for confirmation, and Bruner gestures to Schwimmer and says, "Why don't you ask him? He's seen them." Whoops. Apparently Schwimmer crossed an ethical boundary by going to see the bodies (since there can now be no doubt in his mind that his client is guilty, I guess). McCoy immediately recognizes the significance of this, and can't believe Schwimmer's idiocy.

This information becomes public (apparently because McCoy leaked it to pressure Schwimmer into revealing the bodies' location), and there is public outrage at Schwimmer, including a headline in the Daily News thta reads "Killer's Counsel Keeps Quiet." Schwimmer talks to McCoy outside (as McCoy dismounts his motorcycle, which I don't think we've ever seen before). Schwimmer says he won't reveal the location of the bodies until Bruner waives privilege, which he's not likely to do. They try to get Bruner to waive privilege, but he just gives Serena Southerlyn the old predatory eye that all female ADAs get from sex offenders on this show, and keep silent on the matter.

At this point, you may wonder, given all the unlikely investigations that have yielded fruit before on this show, why are the detectives and prosecutors making absolutely no effort to find the storage locker where Bruner says he put the bodies? It is a glaring hole in the plot that undermines the whole premise. Anyway, Bruner says that the bodies are safely under "lock and key," a phrase which leads McCoy to assert that Schwimmer is complicit in a cover up of the crime, because by unlocking and locking the facility, he is contributing to the crime. McCoy tries to get Bruner to crack, but Bruner gives McCoy a creepy monologue which ends with the best line of dialogue in the whole episode: "I'm the un-you."

McCoy decides to charge Schwimmer with aiding and abetting the cover-up, and he hopes this pressure will get Schwimmer to reveal the location of the bodies. It doesn't work. Southerlyn objects to this method, but Branch and McCoy agree: "Ethics be damned."

Schwimmer refuses to give up the location of the bodies, and the Schwimmer case goes to trial (48 mins). The parents of the missing children are very angry with Schwimmer, and one of them, while testifying, stands up and yells at Schwimmer, "You bastard!"

Then, during the trial, McCoy reveals something which makes the entire second half of the episode seem like a colossal waste of time: Bruner has been sentenced (off-camera) to die by lethal injection. SO WHAT IS THE POINT OF ALL THIS? By focusing on the trial of the barely complicit and not morally culpable lawyer instead of the magnetically villainous killer, the script renders itself devoid of emotional impact. WHO CARES if the lawyer is found guilty or not? It's only dramatically interesting if he eventually breaks down and reveals the location of the bodies SO THAT BRUNER CAN BE CONVICTED. We don't know anything about the girls in the locker, so it emotionally irrelevant to us whether they are found or not. We do, however, know Bruner and we want to see him be punished for what he did. Instead, the episode leaves Bruner behind, and follows the overly technical trial of Schwimmer, who you feel is not an evil person, just a misguided one.

Nonetheless, the trial goes on and Schwimmer refuses to budge. He's convicted on aiding and abetting. Big deal.

The episode is notable because of the performance of Ritchie Coster as Bruner. The first half of it is pretty interesting, and he certainly livens things up, but the episode's fatal flaw is its concentration on Schwimmer instead of Bruner in the last 20 minutes. If not for this, it might have been one of the better episodes in some time.

6.18 Atonement

Michael Imperioli of The Sopranos guest stars in this episode (6.18) in which a model turns up dead, and any number of loosely connected people may be responsible for her death. Briscoe and Curtis investigate, while McCoy and Kincaid assemble a prosecution.

The episode begins with a woman running down the street yelling that a man has stolen her purse. The apparent purse-snatcher is also running. He's caught, and when police go through his garbage back full of purses, they find one that has fresh blood on it. The purse belongs to Sharon Lasko, a model who recently went missing. At some nearby docks, Curtis finds a jacked embroidered "Sharon," but no body.

Curtis and Briscoe are told they have to investigate the case because missing persons is backed up. They talk to her parents, who direct them to Amber, her ex-roommate (also a model) who talks to them while in her underwear. (She's changing.) Amber says she last saw Sharon at a night club talking to the club's sleazy owner, Frederick Scannel. Curtis remembers Scannel from his days working for the Organized Crime Control Board (OCCB). Scannell says he saw Sharon leave with a basketball player, Ken Soames, but Somes says he took Sharon to his apartment building, where they split up. They talk to Soames's limo driver, Johnny Stivers (played by Michael Imperioli). He says he drove her home and then to a modeling shoot near the USS Intrepid early the following morning. A coffee vendor near the Intrepid says he saw her. They track down the photographer from the shoot, Rick Kasteler, who has a reputation for getting too close to his models, and even has a lawsuit pending against him from one of them. While talking to Kasteler, the detectives get a call: Sharon's body has been found in a landfill...she had been left in a Dumpster.

Something leads them to a hotel room that was apparently frequently used by Kasteler(?) -- it is not very clear how they ended up there. They find tickets to the Intrepid there, which leads them to believe she was in the apartment. ME Rogers tells them that the victim had sex that night but wasn't raped. She was hit in the head by a bottle, and that the person she had sex with was different from the person who killed her. The ME also found cocaine in Sharon's system.

They check back with the basketball player who says that the limo driver, Stivers, sold cocaine sometimes. They talk to Stivers who says he doesn't know anything about that and he was busy driving to JFK at the time of the murder. They learn from Castellar's phone records that he called Stivers' limousine service. They search Stivers' car, which has been steam cleaned, but find glass shards under the seat, as well as traces of blood. Stivers is arrested (29 mins). As they arrest him, they find a shrine to Sharon in his apartment.

His lawyer argues extreme emotional disturbance, saying that Stivers was insanely jealous because he had an imagined relationship with Sharon. Amber, the ex-roommate, says that Sharon used to flirt with Stivers, just like she used to flirt with everyone, and always did so to get what she wanted: drugs.

At trial, Stivers testifies on his own behalf (in an unusually low-key performance from Imperioli). But McCoy realizes that Stivers complicated story about being at JFK was made up, and this indicates premeditation. He learns that Scannel and Stivers share a connection: Scannel is the owner of Stivers' limo service. The detectives reinvestigate Scannel and discover that he was using Stivers as a drug courier. Stivers had told Sharon that he had a trunk full of cocaine, and he showed her. This made Sharon a liability, and Scannel ordered Stivers to kill Sharon. Stivers rolls on Scannel, who takes a deal for Murder 2.

Opening Credit Cast Member Screen Shots

Breaking up with one's girlfriend gives you time to do all sorts of important things, such as taking a screenshot of every one of those "cast in motion" shots at the end of the opening credits on Law & Order.

View the files in the open directory, or via this gallery. (Click to enlarge.)

Below the photos is a textual guide to all of the cast changes over the years.

There is something eerie about the visual replaceability of each of the cast members. Note the transitions between seasons 1 and 2, and also seasons 4 and 5. Barely perceptible.

Here is a table I made a while ago showing the cast changes:

Cast Number	Seasons	Cops	Lt	ADAs	DA	Notes
1	1	GD, CN	DF	MM, RB	SH
2	2-3	PS, CN	DF	MM, RB	SH
3	3	JO, CN	DF	MM, RB	SH
4	4	JO, CN	SEM	MM, JH	SH	SEM, JH 1st ep:"Sweeps"
5	5	JO, CN	SEM	SW, JH	SH	SW 1st ep: "Second Opinion"
6	6	JO, BB	SEM	SW, JH	SH
7	7	JO, BB	SEM	SW, CL	SH	CL 1st ep: "Causa Mortis"
8	8	JO, BB	SEM	SW, CL	SH
9	9	JO, BB	SEM	SW, AH	SH
10	10	JO, JLM	SEM	SW, AH	SH
11	11	JO, JLM	SEM	SW, AH	DW
12	12	JO, JLM	SEM	SW, ER	DW
13	13-14	JO, JLM	SEM	SW, ER	FT
15	15-	DF, JLM	SEM	SW, ER	FT

Code	Actors	Seasons
ah	Angie Harmon	9-11
bb	Benjamin Bratt	6-9
cl	Carey Lowell	7-8
cn	Chris Noth	1-5
df	Dann Florek	1-3
dw	Dianne Wiest	11-12
er	Elisabeth Rohm	12-
ft	Fred Thompson	13-
gd	George Dzundza	1
jo	Jerry Orbach	3-
jlm	Jesse L. Martin	10-
jh	Jill Hennessy	4-6
mm	Michael Moriarty	1-4
ps	Paul Sorvino	2-3
rb	Richard Brooks	1-3
sem	S. Epatha Merkerson	4-
sw	Sam Waterston	5-
sh	Steven Hill	1-10

6.14 Custody: The Return of Paul Robinette

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9.10 Hate

In this episode (9.10), the brutal death of a 16-year-old girl in Central Park is traced to a group of young skinheads and Nazi sympathizers who were encouraged by a charismatic advocate of White Power. Briscoe and Curtis investigate, while McCoy and Carmichael figure out how to prosecute hate speech in the context of a murder charge.

The episode begins with a young Latino couple walking in the park. The man picks up a ring case from the ground, and uses the ring inside to propose to his girlfriend. She says yes, and as they embrace, she looks over his shoulder and sees the body of a young girl hanging from a tree. The detectives show up and learn she died on the way to the hospital. She has no ID on her, but she's carrying a keychain with a flashlight on it. The flashlight is inscibed with the name of a printing company. They also learn she was beaten and stoned to death.

The detectives question the owner of the shop featured on the flashlight, but the owner of the shop realizes that it's his daughter who has been killed. He identifies her as Christina, and says she went to Brandeis High. We also learn she was strangled with a choke chain, which they hope to trace.

As the prepare to go on with the investigation, Van Buren pulls Briscoe aside and hands him a sheet of paper. Briscoe reads the paper and reacts somewhat emotionally, drawing Curtis' attention. Briscoe tells Curtis that the sheet says tht the guy who shot his daughter (see the episode Damaged) was found dead of a heroin overdose. Briscoe says it's one less thing he has to worry about now.

Christina was missing her student bus pass, and it turns up on a homeless guy who they bring in for questioning. After much rambling, they determine that he found it in a Dumpster by a travel agent's office. The detectives check the dumpster and find Christina's backpack. It contains a travel kit, which leads them to believe she was planning a trip. They check her phone records and discover was talking to a friend in Philadelphia just before her murder. They head down to Philly to question her friend Lori. Lori says Christina wanted to attend a Hitler Youth rally on a farm in Pennsylvania, and had invited. Lori says Christina was clueless about the true nature of these kids, and Lori, being Jewish, declined the invitation. She gives them a flyer advertising the rally.

They show the flyer to Christina's dad, who doesn't know anything about his daughter hanging out with any Nazis, but he recognizes the paper stock, and theorizes that one of his young employeees, Jessica, may have printed the flyers in his shop when he wasn't around.

This is where the detectives begin to break the case wide open: they talk to Jessica, who is defensive, and tells them about her boyfriend Derek. Derek seems to be involved in the movement. They talk to Derek at his home, and he's not helpful. His mom, very rattled and shaky, talks to Briscoe, and its clear she doesn't have any control over her violent son.

A pretzel vendor who works near the travel agent says he saw some kids by the Dumpster on the day of the murder getting into a van that matches Derek's. Forensics goes over the van but doesn't find much evidence, besides a certain kind of moth that is only found in Pennsylvania. Derek says he hasn't been to the farm in PA, so this is suspicious. They pick him up for questioning. He gets into a heated confrontation with Curtis who shoves him down. His mom also talks to Van Buren, and says that Derek sometimes hits her. His mom rolls on him and admits he was in PA.

That sends the detectives down to Nuremberg(!), PA where they execute an arrest warrant at the farm where the remaining suspects in the assault are holed up. The kids are brought into custody at the PA State Police station. The detectives purposely miss the next train back to NYC so they can have more time to question the kids.

They interrogate each of the kids, but only one of them, Peter, seems weak enough to break. They break him. He says the kids killed Christina because she "told her Jew friend" about the rally and was going to rat them out. She was considered a traitor. He also admits that they "stomp" Jews, gay people, and black people, although he uses epithets to describe them.

At arraignment, the whole bunch of kids are brought up on charges. Peter's lawyer makes a motion to separate him from the others and put him into the family court system. It turns out that he's 15 years old, not 18 like it said on the fake ID he gave the detectives. Whoops. His lawyer makes a motion to suppress his statement. The judge allows the statement, until he hears that the kids were also held in PA because of the missed train. For some reason, this is in violation of procedure, and the judge throws out the statement. As McCoy says, that puts the case "in the crapper."

They make another attempt to roll Jessica, Derek's girlfriend. It foes a little better, and she mentions a man named Tom Willis, a white power advocate who heads a loosely knit organization and publishes a newsletter advocating violent solutions. Jessica says Tom told the kids that traitors like Christina had to be dealt with.

They want to go inside Willis's organization to get him to make an incriminating statement. Through an intelligence detective, they get a snitch to accompany a detective to a Willis meeting. Briscoe and Curtis can't go in, and Van Buren can't either, so they get good ole Morris Lamott, aka Mo, to go in. He does, but they fail to to get Willis to make any incriminating statements about the murder. Mo does, however, get a videotape of Willis making some pro-white-people speeches. McCoy wants to seize other videotapes, and he charges Willis with distributing alcohol to minors, just so he can get him into custody. Curtis asks, "Can we just skip the formalities and shoot Willis?"

With Willis in custody, they review the tapes and see him talking to Derek, but Carmichael says that's not enough evidence to really prove anything. They try to roll Peter again. They have a meeting in the family conference room. At first, Peter starts in with the white power crap again, but then his dad slaps him upside the head and tells him that Peter's grandfather took a bullet fighting the Nazis and he'll be damned if his own son is not going to respect that. Peter rolls, and mentions another figure in the organization, Jimmy Parnell. Parnell, Peter says, participated in an unsolved gay bashing incident in the city.

McCoy argues that Willis can be charged with murder because he indirectly encouraged the kids to kill Christina. Both Schiff and Carmichael feel this isn't going to work and are concerned about the free speech implications, but they just roll their eyes at him and McCoy proceeds.

Things move along, and all the kids and Parnell plead out on various charges, though Derek refuses to deal. So they put Derek and Willis on trial for Murder 2.

At trial (48 mins), not a lot of time is spent on camera proving Derek's involvement: it all goes to showing that Willis's speeches constituted "conduct" that he can be held legally accountable for. Arguments go both ways, and continue for a long time, but eventually -- probably swayed by McCoy quoting Willis as stating that the Holocause was necessary -- the jury finds both Derek and Willis guilty of Murder 2.

After the verdict, Carmichael and Schiff again question the value of the case, but McCoy realizes his victory is not absolute. "If I thought I could stop hate with one prosecution, I'd be a fool," he says. Schiff replies, "Yep. But you'd be my kind of fool."

1.7 By Hooker, By Crook

In this early episode (1.7), a guy turns up dead, apparently by the hands of the prostitute. Greevey and Logan investigate while Stone and Robinette present their prosecution in a series of unusual courtroom scenes.

The episode begins with some cops riding on horseback through Central Park. A woman's dog finds a badly injured man. He's taken to the hospital, where Greevey and Logan begin their investigation. They talk to some callous nurses, who have set up a pool on the likelihood of the victim's death. They learn that the victim suffered a blow to the head and had a heart attack. Strangely, his underwear was found to be on backwards.

The victim is identified as Irv Diamond. His glass eye and wallet were found. Irv has a reputation for flirting with the ladies. They track his movements to a local bar, where they find more ladies he flirted with and learned he was pretty drunk the night he got attacked.

The detectives then trace his steps to a hotel, where it appears he got hooked up with a lady from an escort service. An old bellhop gives them the lowdown. We learn that he ordered room service and that the girl with him was blonde.

The detectives further learn that the escort service also did business as "Poppy Catering." To find the escort who was with Irv, Greevey goes undercover at the hotel and calls the escort service, requesting a girl who matches Irv's dates descriptin. She shows up, but is convinced Greevey is a cop, based on his shoes. Greevey denies this, talks to her about an arrangement, and arrests her. When she says that he's not supposed to lie because he's a cop, he says, "I'm a cop. They pay me to lie."

After they take her into custody, Logan informs everyone that Diamond has died of his injuries. Jolene, the prostitute, admits during interrogation, she was with him. (During this sequence, there is a very unusual wide-angle shot of the detectives peering at Jolene -- the show was still finding its visual style during this episode.) Jolene says he was alive when she left, and says her driver was the last person to see Irv.

They talk to the driver, Cookie Molina, who says Jolene's boss, a madame, told him that because Irv had had a heart attack, he needed to be dealt with. Cookie's idea of dealing with it was to take a baseball bat to Irv's head and dispose of his nearly-lifeless body in the park.

They track down the madame, who goes by the name of Jasmine, at a bordello. It seems unlikely that there are lounge-like whorehouses around Manhattan where women are hanging out in lingerie waiting for johns to show up, but whatever. They arrest Jasmine (27 mins). They learn that Jasmine has lawyered up with a guy named Allclair, who is a high-priced lawyer unlikely to associate with comparative riff-raff like Jasmine. They wonder what's going on. They learn that the woman behind the entire "Poppy Catering" escort service is a high society matron named Livia Winthrop, whose family can be traced back to colonial America.

Anyway, she's arraigned at night court in a raucous scene where a street walker is in the background yelling at her pimp Andrew. The scene is apparently intended for comic effect, but it feels very stereotyped and out of place, especially against the rest of the episode and certainly the rest of the series. In any case, Cookie makes a (rather improbable) deal to roll on Jasmine and Mrs Winthrop, and walks, free of charges. The detectives get their hands on the service's "trick book" which reads like the social register.

But not everyone is happy with how well the investigation is going: an aide to the mayor (played by Courtney Vance) comes in to talk to Stone and wants him to back off the case: some very powerful toes are getting stepped on. Stone, as is typical, refuses, and he charges Winthrop with 2nd degree murder, getting right in the face of the defendant's attorney as he tells him this.

Well, the episode then gets a taste of early 90s "awareness" television when Robinette reveals that the escort, Jolene is HIV-positive. Unfortunately for her, Jolene doesn't know it yet, and Stone and Robinette have to go out to her house -- where she all of a sudden looks like a soccer mom -- and tell her. The whole time they're talking to her, she's gesturing with a kitchen knife, and you get the impression she's going to kill herself with it at any moment.

Winthrop's trial (44 mins) is a disorganized affair -- it takes place on a darkly lit, early set (not the clear, wide-open set we're used to from later eps) and people -- including the jurors -- are laughing and calling out throughout the proceedings. Cookie testifies he overheard Winthrop say a 2-hour session with Jolene would kill the victim, and the defense counsel actually says of Cookie, "This man is despicable." (It's hard to imagine this kind of foolish dialogue in later episodes of the series.) Schiff shows up (52 mins) and tells Stone to make a deal. Shortly thereafter, we learn that Jolene had sex with 800-1000 men in the time she's been a prostitute, and had only had sex with 3 men prior to that. Despite all this interesting information, it becomes clear that from a dramatic point of view, this episode and the case have lost their direction. People just keep talking and saying provocative things, but it doesn't really add up to a plot or a drama. Nonetheless, after revealing that Winthrop made $1.6M a year from her operation, he makes a deal with her for involuntary manslaughter. She gets 2.5 years.

The episode is notable because it seems so primitive by the standards of later episodes. The sets are darkly lit, there's lots of extraneous and silly dialogue, and the dramatic tension is dissipated over the course of the hour. It's also notable because of Courtney Vance's appearance as the mayor's aide. Years later, he would go on to star on L&O: Criminal Intent as Assistant District Attorney Ron Carver. The episode seems very loosely modeled on the case of the Mayflower Madam, the NYC society dame who was linked to a prostitution ring in 1970s and 1980s.

The episode's title is a play on the phrase "By hook or by crook."

14.22 Gaijin

In this episode (14.22), a wealthy Japanese couple appears to have been violently robbed downtown, resulting in the death of the woman, but Briscoe and Green soon learn that there is more to the story than it initially appears. DA Branch helps McCoy and Southerlyn build their prosecution.

The episode begins at a 911 call center, where here that a Japanese tourist has been shot and robbed. The woman's husband says the assailant was a black male. The husband, Mr. Yoshida, is OK, but the woman is in critical condition. He tells the detectives that he and his wife had gone down to Ground Zero and then gotten lost. He says the robber took his wife's necklace and fled in a red van.

The husband is a wealthy and well-known club owner in Japan, and his wife is a model. Van Buren says she fears the case will make NYC look like Miami in the late 1990s, when tourists were constantly the subject of attacks.

The detectives begin their search for the perpetrator with a canvas of the neighborhood. They find a fleet of red vans at a maintenance company and talk to Tom Walker, the driver of one of the vans. Walker at first can't account for his whereabouts, but then it turns out that he detoured from his usual route to visit his girlfriend on her birthday and give her a present, a vacuum cleaner. This last revelation makes Green laugh out loud.

Back to square one, just in time to learn from Van Buren that Mrs Yoshida has died from her injuries. They round up a bunch of African-American guys and have the husband try to make an ID. No luck. The political pressure is starting in thouhg, and we learn that a city councilman and the mayor are involved. They catch their first break, though, when they learn a Lexus was seen speeding from the scene. It might be too little, too late, however: the Japanese government issues a travel advisory to its citizens, saying NYC is too dangerous to visit. Whatever.

The detectives review a map on the wall, considering information about the Lexus. They figure it may have been heading towards the Holland Tunnel. They go look at pictures that computerized security cameras took at the tunnel around that time, and find an image of a Lexus heading to NJ. They trace it to an elderly Japanese-American couple with a thuggish grandson, Bobby Ito. When they talk to Ito, they notice he has tattoos consistent with members of the Yakuza, the Japanese mafia. The Yakuza are supposedly a big deal in the Ginza district, where Ito has his nightclub. It begins to look like there is more going on here than a simple robbery.

They decide to move on Ito, and they corner him in his apartment, and we have a little Ed Green 5-Second Foot Chase™ to bring him into custody. They find the murder weapon in his apartment.

Ito lawyers up, but Mr Yoshida has fled back to Japan, where he trashes New York City in a televised press conference. McCoy and Southerlyn visit Ito in Rikers, where Ito suggests Yoshida hired him to kill his wife, so he get the $3 million in insurance money and pay off his $1 million gambling debt to the Yakuza.

The case against Yoshida starts looking better and better. A Chinese-American (important later) waitress at a diner confirms she saw Yoshida and Ito together at the diner. The case is coming along, now they just have to get Yoshida back in the United States. However, despite McCoy's visit to the Japanese consulate, the Japanese government refuses to extradite Yoshida, and they know that if he's tried in Japan (where standards regarding circumstantial evidence are much tougher), double-jeopardy will attach in the US, and they won't be able to prosecute him.

This leads DA Arthur Branch to come up with a plan: announce they have a suspect in custody -- one matching Yoshida's description of a young black man -- and tell the world they need Yoshida back to make the ID. To this end, Branch holds a press conference during which he falsely states that they have a black man in custody and they're sure it's him and they just need Yoshida to identify him. Van Buren is justifiably troubled by this, not just because Branch lied to New York and Japan, but because, as she says, the public sees yet another black man connected to a violent crime in the city, and it just reinforces people's fears.

Despite the questionable nature of the tactic, it works, and Yoshida returns to the US via JFK Airport, where Green and Briscoe arrest him in front of everyone. Yoshida is arraigned and remanded to custody. He's confronted with the evidence against him at Rikers, and his lawyer moves for a change of venue, so he won't be put on trial in a city he recently insulted on TV. The motion fails, but his cynical defense lawyer comes up with another tactic: during voir dire (jury selection), he exlucdes every black person. McCoy challenges the one Asian juror, but for reasons unrelated to race. Inexplicably, the judge allows the defense counsel to use this tactic, a decision which defies credibility in my opinion.

At trial, things go pretty well, but it's hard to tell which way the jury is leaning. There's an interesting moment when Yoshida says of Chen, the Chinese-America waitress that, "She's Chinese...maybe she thinks all Japanese look alike." This line seems to be a jab at the typical non-Asian-American stereotype of the appearance of Asians. Considering this and other evidence, the jury deliberates and comes back with a verdict of guilty.

McCoy ends the episode by warning his boss, Branch, that he's playing with fire by manipulating and lying to the press and the city about made-up suspects.

The title of the episode refers to a Japanese word for "foreigner," which is what Yoshida is in the US.

8.11 Under the Influence

In this episode (8.11), McCoy commits the ethical transgression which will ultimately lead to Ross's testifying against him at the disciplinary committee. The episode revolves around a drunk driving incident that kills three people, including a 5-year-old boy. McCoy pursues first-degree murder charges, even though the defendant was apparently to drunk at the time of the accident to form intent. As I'll describe in more detail later, McCoy hides evidence regarding the man's drunken state so that he can make the charges stick.

The episode begins with a mother preparing her children to go on a trip. As she brings her two daughters outside, she discovers her husband and her 5-year-old son dead in the street, run over. Nearby, an eldery gentleman has also been struck and killed. Briscoe and Curtis respond and learn from the accidentent investigation unit that the driver apparently made no effort to slow down.

They talk to the young daughter in the family who says she saw a big black car moving quickly down the street (Pleasant Avenue in East Harlem). They talk to the widow of the gentleman, who IDs his body and says he had a silver-tipped walking stick and would like it back. There was no such stick at the scene, which means someone must have come along and taken it.

Profaci gets on the case of the missing cane, and leads Briscoe and Curtis to a squabbling pair of homeless guys, Mr Alternator Jones and Mr Rogers. Mr Jones, whose dad used to work at a Ford plant, hit Mr Rogers with a silver-tipped cane, which he says he found at the scene of the accident.

Meanwhile, forensics indicates that the victims were struck by a Jaguar, Merecedes, or BMW (based on the imprints found on the boy.) Curtis takes photos of these cars over to the victim's family (the Galvez's), and the daughter says the car was a Jaguar. While there, the dets go through condolence cards received by Mrs Galvez. Many of them have been sent anonymously and included cash. They find one card that mentions the boy's yellow boots: the boy was not wearing yellow boots at the hospital, however, which indicates that whoever sent this letter was at the scene of the accident. They trace the hundred dollar bills found in the envelope to a bank, and are able to then correlate the money to two customers who withdrew that much money. That leads them to Susan Young. They bring in Young under false pretenses, telling her that they found a credit card of hers that went missing months earlier. Once she's at the precinct, they present her with evidence about her involvement in the accident. She doesn't reveal her story, however, even when Curtis angrily confronts her. He shows her photos of the dead boy, and she throws up in a trash can.

They review the case with McCoy and Ross, and it's clear that McCoy is angry about the case as well. They look through Young's phone records, and determine that she was talking to someone in Rio de Janeiro every night for a week, and that she may have picked this person up at the airport on the night of the accident. They head to the airport, and a security guard says he remembers Young and the man she was with because the man was very drunk and belligerent. This leads them to their prime suspect: Bernard Dressler.

Van Buren, while cursing out a vending machine that stole her quarter, tells Briscoe and Curtis to solve the case quickly because the department is cutting her budget, a move she says is in response to her lawsuit (which alleges they passed over her for a promotion because she's black).

The detectives talk to Dressler at his office. He's a cocky bastard, but yields the keys to his car (a Jaguar) so the detectives so they can check it for forensic evidence. The car is clean, but a forensic automotive technician discovers that 3 of the 4 Vehicle Identification Number tags have been switched. He finds the fourth tag (secretly placed by the manufacturer) indicating that this is not the car that Dressler supposedly owns. They trace this car to an exotic car dealer, and find that Dressler's car had been detailed and repaired and was about to be exported to Russia. Under pressure, the car dealer admits he swapped cars with Dressler. Based on this, they arrest Dressler (21 mins) at a business meeting, where he gets upset and slightly resists arrest until Curtis slams his head into a desk.

The prosecutors determine they need a stronger witness to testify that Young and Dressler were seen together at the airport. (The security guard's ID is "soft.") They try to get the airline to turn over its passenger manifest from the flight, but they resists, arguing that the Warsaw Convention allows them not to. Schiff says that since they airline has offices in New York City, Ross should issue subpoenas and seize their furniture and computers until they comply.

The subpoenas are taken up by Judge Feldman, who we soon learn is planning to run against Schiff for the position of District Attorney. The airline is apparently afraid of complying with the subpoenas because evidence might lead to a lawsuit against it for serving too many drinks to Dressler. The judge decides in McCoy's favor, and then pulls he and Ross aside and tells them that he has an aggressive stance against drunk driving, and that he'll help McCoy in any way he can. This is improper, and Ross knows it. She tells McCoy they should report the incident to the defense, but he refuses.

Another passenger (and two off camera) tell Ross that Young and Dressler were together at the airport. They bring Young in again as a material witness and threaten to hold her in the Crypts, the cells below the courthouse, until she testifies about what she knows. She finally rolls on her abusive boyfriend, Dressler, and says that he also hit a girl in Masachusetts.

Schiff says he wants to make an example of Dressler, and wants to charge him with Murder I. McCoy agrees, but Ross argues they can't prove intent, especially since he was drunk. This is precisely what the defense argues when presented with the charge. Dressler says he lost count after his 12th drink. McCoy tracks down a flight attendant who served Dressler who says in a sworn statement that she served Dressler 15 drinks and he was so drunk he couldn't even fill out his customs statement. This establishes that Dressler was too drunk to form intent, and so therefore cannot be charges with Murder I.

What happens next is what leads to all the difficulties with the disciplinary committee later on: McCoy tells the airline's lawyer that since the flight attendant is a citizen of Columbia, she cannot be compelled to testify if she does not return to the United States. The lawyer silently acknowledges what McCoy is doing: he's helping the airline (she can't testify in a civil suit) and he's helping his own case (she can't testify he was too drunk to form intent.) Ross gets very angry and tells McCoy he could be disbarred for such behavior. He says, "That's up to you," meaning that will only happen if she testifies against him or tells someone. She says the attendant's statement is "exculpatory" and should be turned over.

At trial (41 mins), the defense repeatedly tries to establish that Dressler was drunk at the time of the accident, but McCoy objects every time they do, and Judge Feldman sustains him. During a break in the trial, Ross talks to Briscoe about McCoy's motivations for being so aggressive on the case: she knows that McCoy is upset about her predecessor (and Jack's lover) Claire Kincaid being killed by a drunk driver, and she thinks that incident is affecting his judgment here. Briscoe says that McCoy hasn't said, "This one's for Claire Kincaid." He also says he's is upset that Claire's killer only got "12 months at Mount Macgregor," which we are led to believe represents a not-very-harsh sentence. Briscoe also retells the story of the accident to Ross, familiar to anyone who has seen the episode titled Aftershock.

Back at trial, Susan Young testifies against her boyfriend. The defense wants to make a deal for Man I, but McCoy refuses, even though both Ross and Schiff tell him it makes sense to accept the deal. Ross even goes so far as to accuse McCoy (and Feldman) of "legal murder," since he is suppressing the flight attendant's statement. Ross and McCoy have a rather heated argument, during which she raises the specter of Claire Kincaid by saying McCoy wants Dressler to get more than 12 months at Mount Macgregor. He tells her she doesn't know what she talking about, and he yells at her, saying she's so used to being a defense attorney she's forgotten what she's doing in the prosecutor's office. She retorts that he is the one who has forgotten what he's doing there. (Meaning that he's so bent on pursuing vengeance/justice that he's ignoring the law.)

Back at trial, Dressler takes the stand, and he's doing miserably, but insists he doesn't remember anything. Finally, as McCoy confronts him with pictures of the victims, he begins to break down, and actually asks McCoy (not the jury) to forgive him. This causes a change in McCoy's body language and after some hesitation, he does something which sends his whole case down the crapper: he introduces the flight attendant's statement. Judge Feldman demands to see everyone in chambers, and is angry with McCoy for changing tactics and destroying his own case, which Feldman had hopes to use to promote his own "tough on crime" reputation. He allows the statement into evidence, but then cryptically asks McCoy if he is familiar with the provisions of Title L. McCoy explains to Ross that Title L is what they now call sections 195, and 195.05 of the criminal code, the part that governs official misconduct. It's clear that Feldman has just threatened McCoy.

Back in the courtroom, McCoy reads from the flight attendant's statement, and this lets the defendant off the hook for Murder I. Why he doesn't just pursue the case as he was and negotiate a plea arrangement with Dressler is a mystery to me, but nonetheless, he now proposes a deal with Dressler: Vehicular Manslaughter I, with a sentence of 5-15 years.

Judge Feldman must approve of the deal, which he initially resists, and tells McCoy he's going to report him to the ethics committee, but McCoy responds by saying Feldman, too, has acted improperly, and he did so in front of Ross. Feldman relents, and accepts the plea. At the entry of the plea, Dressler apologizes, and Feldman issues a big speech about how the sentencing guidelines are insufficient to express his outrage, etc., etc.

This gets his picture in the paper next to a big headline touting a maximum sentence. Schiff looks at the paper and decides it's time to hire a campaign manager. Ross invites McCoy to come to dinner with David (her boyfriend), but McCoy replies "three's a crowd," but promises to meet her for dessert. It seems he wants to spend some alone time thinking about Claire.

The episode is notable because of it contains the incident which leads to McCoy facing the ethics committee (in Jamie Ross's final episode), and because it sets up the Feldman story arc in which he challenges Schiff. It's also notable because we see Curtis's wife and kids in an early scene, and we see his wife walking using crutches because of her MS.

The episode is another chapter in the tense relationship between McCoy and Ross. She's arguably the strongest-willed of all the ADAs, and in this episode and many others she makes her opinions known. This often leads to heated arguments with McCoy, and given his relationship with Claire, her predecessor, it's no mystery why they don't get along all the time. At the end of the ep, Ross tries to show her forgiveness of Jack by inviting him to dinner and patting him on the shoulder, but ultimately, she does go on to testify against him at his disciplinary hearing.

The title of the episode seems to refer both to Dressler's condition at the time of the accident, and to the way McCoy is operating "under the influence" of Kincaid's death.

ps. This is the 200th episode of the original series I have summarized for this website.

7.2 I.D.: McCoy Jailed for Contempt

In this unusual episode (7.2), McCoy ends up jailed for contempt after he challenges a judge who is sexually harassing Jamie Ross and who isn't giving McCoy a fair chance at a criminal trial. The trial involves a woman who killed her sister because she was having an affair with the sister's con-man husband, or so it appears. We later discover that there is much more to the story.

The episode begins with two businessmen walking through the lobby of a large office building. They are complaining that they have to come in so early to participate in a video conference call with some people in New Zealand. They discuss the international dateline's relevance to the proceedings for a few seconds, and make a grisly discovery as they step into the elevator: the naked body of a dead blonde woman. Briscoe and Curtis are called to the scene. The woman is carrying no ID (having no clothes), and her fingerprints are not in the system, so they have to try to figure out who she is the hard way. Unfortunately, this seems like it's going to involve showing a polaroid of her to people in each of the 407 offices in the building.

They begin by talking to the technician in charge of the elevators, who has an elaborate computer system that tells him that "Car 3," the elevator in which she was found, was called around 3 AM. They use old-fashioned detective work to determine that the person who called the elevator is a CPA who does a lot of work with models. They visit him as he prepares to leave town, and he is defensive, but innocent. He reports that as he was leaving that night, he called for the elevator, then stepped back into his office to pick something up. He therefore missed the elevator with the body in it. Not a likely story, but it turns out to be true.

They get more information about the movements of the elevator from the elevator technician, who tells them that the body was probably stashed in the elevator on the 18th floor, due to some dual action on the elevators on that floor at that time. They talk to the secretary on that floor (colorfully played by Aida Turturro, aka Janice on The Sopranos), who says that perhaps the victim was a woman she talked to on the phone earlier that day, a tourist from the Midwest who needed directions to the building. She says the tourist said she was staying at the Barrington Hotel.

They head over to the Barrington Hotel and look at a guest list. Based on the information they have, they determine the woman is probably Lucy Sullivan, from Terra Haute, Indiana. They enter her room, and hear the shower turned on. They enter the bathroom, and find a woman there. She identifies herself as Lucy Sullivan. Oops! But there's more to the story: she says that her sister Joanne has gone missing, so perhaps it was her they found in the elevator. They show her the Polaroid, and she confirms the body is Joanne's. Lucy says Joanne had a boyfriend in the city and was looking for a job. They learn that Joanne had a warrant out for her arrest. They visit the NJ detective investigating the case (played by the same guy from that episode about the black guy pretending to be white), and he says Joanne was involved in conning casinos in Atlantic City, a profession that had gotten her in trouble with both sides of the law: the mob was also out to get her. He says she and her husband(!), William Dunbar, ran a scheme called "hand mucking" in which they swapped cards with each other while playing poker.

They talk to Lucy Sullivan again, and you get the impression something is not quite right with her: she is a little too innocent-seeming, a little too guileless. They talk to the receptionist on the 18th floor again, who IDs Mr Dunbar as the tenant on her floor. They search his office and find a .25 caliber slug matching the one found in the dead body. They visit Dunbar's apartment (on an arrest warrant, not a search warrant) and perform a questionable search during which Curtis (just barely off-camera) finds the murder weapon and a picture of Lucy Sullivan with Dunbar. They talk to the superintendent of the building who says he saw Lucy leaving the building the morning of a few days earlier. This is strange, since (a) Lucy had previously told the dets she didn't recognize Dunbar and (b) Dunbar was supposedly her sister's husband. I guess our suspicions about her turned out to be founded.

The detectives develop the theory that Lucy was having an affair with Dunbar, and killed her sister Joanne to be with him. Based on all her lies and the account of the super, they arrest her (27 mins).

The trial judge for the case, Judge Nathan Parks (played by Jerry Adler, aka Hesh from The Sopranos) flirts with ADA Ross during a hearing over the suppression of some evidence. The hearing involves whether the gun should be suppressed because it wasn't in plain view. (As I said, when Curtis finds the gun, the director cleverly had left barely him off-camera.) He takes the unusual step of taking everyone -- the prosecutors, the detective, and the defense counsel -- over to the apartment to check it out. He flirts with/harasses Ross some more t the apartment, asking her about her habits when she sleeps over at a man's house. Everyone is rolling their eyes at him and unsettled. McCoy goes so far as to object to this behavior and tells him it is "inappropriate." Nonetheless, in an apparent attempt to win Ross's favor, he rules that the evidence is allowable against Sullivan, since she could have no expectation of privacy. Outside, Ross tells McCoy she doesn't really mind the harassment. (But wait til she sees what's coming next.)

At trial (33 mins), Judge Parks asks a witness if he is sure he saw Lucy leaving the apartment on the day in question. He has Lucy stand up, and then -- oddly -- asks Ross to stand up, too, so the witness can compare body types. Everyone rolls their eyes some more. Regardless, the witness says he is sure that Lucy is the woman he saw. As Det. Curtis testifies, his pager goes off: Mr. Dunbar has been found dead in New Jersey, having washed up from the Hudson River. Looks like the mob caught up with him.

Back at trial, the defense presents a tour ticket purchased by Lucy Sullivan at the time she was supposedly being spotted at Dunbar's apartment building. How'd she do that? Schiff says she has a knack for being in two places at the same time, a statement which leads McCoy to finally realize what observant viewers may have suspect from the beginning: Lucy might really be Joanne, and Joanne might really be Lucy. In other words, the con-woman killed her sister and assumed her identity, so she could escape from the mob.

Back at trial, everyone's waiting for Ross to show up. She enters with an old lady in tow. But before we can learn what this lady is doing there, Judge Parks starts harassing the hell out of her, accusing her of being late because she was having a rendezvous with a man. McCoy gets angry, and tells the judge that the woman with Ross is from Terre Haute and will testify that the defendant is not Lucy Sullivan. This means that the person on trial is not who she says she is. The judge is upset and calls everyone into chambers. He says it's McCoy's fault that he's been conned and he declares a mistrial, but won't permit a re-trial. It seems clear that he's behaving this way because he's angry with McCoy and Ross for reacting against his interaction with Ross.

McCoy is flabbergasted and appeals the decision to an appellate court, in a proceeding that we get to see. The panel of judges is swayed by his argument, and they allow a retrial. However, they assign the case back to Judge Parks, over McCoy's objection.

At the new trial, McCoy tries to get Curtis to testify again about the gun he found during that search, but the defense counsel objects and Judge Parks sustains the objection! He says that since it now turns out that the defendant, Joanne Sullivan, was married to Mr Dunbar, she had an expectation of privacy in the apartment. McCoy is furious, and -- during a terrific bit of acting from Sam Waterston -- raises the evidence about the gun anyway, despite repeated warnings from the judge. Judge Parks goes ballistic and orders McCoy cuffed and placed in contempt. He's hauled out of the courtroom and everything. The judge demands that Ross continue the examination of the witness, and doesn't give her time to prepare.

In the funny scene that follows, Schiff visits McCoy in the courthouse lockup [screen shot]. Schiff looks at McCoy in the jail cell, and harrumphs, "Nice..." in his trademark style. McCoy introduces him to the other prisoners in the cell, and they talk about what to do. Schiff says he's going to visit the judge and talk things over with him.

Schiff does so, and tells Judge Parks he was out of line and asks him to step down from the trial. Parks responds angrily but calmly. Schiff then pursues the issue with a judge who reviews the various transcripts and is decidedly perturbed by Parks' handling of the case. In issuing his decision, he tells Parks: "You just caught a bad case of the flu," meaning that Parks must step down from the trial, but he gives him a face-saving way of doing so. Parks resists for a moment, but it's inevitable.

A new judge is assigned, and she instructs the jury that some witnesses will retestify and that new evidence (we assume the gun) will be introduced. Joanne seeks a deal with McCoy for Man I, but he refuses, which causes her to finally snap out of her "nice Midwestern girl" persona for a minute and proclaim that her boring sister had "no life," and so it was no big loss that she was killed. This doesn't exactly garner her a lot of sympathy from the prosecution, and she is promptly convicted of murder.

The episode is notable because McCoy actually ends up in jail over the contempt charges, and also because the episode employs two future cast members of The Sopranos: Aida Turturro (who has been on L&O numerous times) and Jerry Adler. It's also notable because of the unusual subplot involving Judge Parks and his harassment of the unflappable Ross.

The title of the episode refers both to the initial process of having to identify the victim without anything to go on, and also to the dual identity of Joanne/Lucy Sullivan.

6.10 Remand

In this emotionally grueling episode (6.10), an arson suspect says he has information about a 30-year-old brutal rape and assualt case that could exonerate the man convicted of the crime. Briscoe and Curtis have to prove the case all over again, and McCoy and Kincaid have to prosecute the case against the same man Schiff convicted three decades earlier. It's a difficult task for everyone, including the viewer.

The episode begins with Briscoe and Curtis responding to an arson scene at a sidewalk Christmas tree market where one of the sellers died. They bring a suspect in immediately, and for leverage, he says he has information about a famous rape and assault case from 1965. The victim in the case was Cookie Costello, who was raped and stabbed as her neighbors ignored her screams and looked on. (The case mirrors that of Kitty Genovese, who was killed during a similar trauma in NYC.) The arson suspect says he was sharing beers with a guy named Bobby who told him that he stabbed Cookie in such a way that she wouldn't be able to have kids. This information was never made public, so it appears that this Bobby must have committed the crime.

The detectives begin to investigate the case, while McCoy and Kincaid consider the legal ramifications. They learn that Schiff prosecuted the case 30 years earlier. They make a deal with the arson suspect, and learn that the person he shared beers with was Bobby Farina, a low-level debt collector and thug for the mob back in the old days. Briscoe and Curtis talk to Farina, who says he got that information from his lawer, Mr Teradash, who also represented Sal Munoz, the man convicted of the attack on Cookie.

Briscoe and Curtis next talk to the original detective on the case, Det. Landis (played by veteran Abe Vigoda), who says it was a good bust and they had a confession from Munoz and everything. Briscoe cryptically asks Landis if the confession came by way of "The West End Grill," which he explains to Curtis is a euphemism for the docks on the west side where they used to nearly drown suspects while interrogating them.

Next, the dets reluctantly visit Cookie herself, who lives with her bitter and defensive father. Cookie says she doesn't remember anything about the attack, and she doesn't know Farina. Her dad says he remembers Farina from the neighborhood, and that he was a no good kid. Cookie also reveals that she had gambling debts, which raises the detectives interests because Farina was a debt collector. They next talk to Farina's boss in the mob (played by the guy who played Carmine on The Sopranos), and he offers an alibi for Farina, an alibi which holds up.

Next, the detectives make a crucial discovery: Munoz's lawyer, Mr Teradash, also once represented Cookie in a gambling case. Uh oh! Conflict of interest! This puts the verdict against Munoz in jeopardy. In such cases, a client is allowed to sign a waiver, indicating he doesn't care about the conflict. After much effort, the prosecutors are unable to find any record of this waiver, although there is some indication Munoz may have purposely hidden or destroyed it to help his chances of a new trial. This issue leads to a judge setting aside the original guilty verdict against Munoz. Time for a new trial!

At his arraignment, Munoz is remanded -- he's not free yet. But his talented lawyer -- a woman who used to work with his original lawyer -- gets his confession suppressed because he wasn't Mirandized. McCoy argues that Miranda rights didn't exist back in 1965, so it shouldn't matter. The judge disagrees and suppresses the confession. (So, does this mean every suspect convicted on the basis of a confession prior to 1966 should be freed? Not very believable.)

This development forces Briscoe and Curtis to re-investigate the case from scratch -- finding witnesses, getting by on what little forensics they have, and lacking the confession. Forensics is able to get some of Munoz's DNA from the dress Cookie was wearing at the time of her attack (which her dad had been keeping all these years), but they also find the DNA of a third person. It turns out this DNA came from -- gasp! -- Cookie's unborn baby! Yikes. The doctors never told the original detectives that Cookie was pregnant. They talk to Cookie, and guess who the father of her child was: Bobby Farina! Terrific. Now it looks like he had a motive for killing her. Kincaid insists this information should be shared with Munoz's defense, but Schiff and McCoy both say they are legally, ethically, and morally permitted not to, as long as they don't put Cookie on the stand. Schiff and Kincaid have a rather heated discussion on the matter.

At trial (46 mins), the defense does a great job, and McCoy and Kincaid know they are getting their butts kicked. McCoy tells Schiff they have to put Cookie on the stand, against their original intentions. That means telling the defense about Farina's being the father of her child. Cookie gets on the stand, and McCoy chooses to have her initiate the conversation about Farina being the dad, so that he can take the shock value of that information away from the defense. When McCoy is done, the defense attorney starts in, and is devastating in her cross-examination. In one of the most emotionally grueling scenes in the history of the show, the attorney shreds Cookie factually and emotionally, and Cookie is left in tears and shaking, unsure about the events of that day, unsure about whether perhaps it was Farina who raped her. This leaves the jury with the impression that Farina could be the rapist. (McCoy, for some reason, fails to present Farina's alibi witness, leaving the door open.)

In a development that at first seems like it might save the day, Schiff tells McCoy about Munoz's girlfriend from the time who disappeared to the Dominican Republic. McCoy finds her and she tells the judge that Munoz attacked and raped her on several occassions at knife point and threatened to cut her so she wouldn't be able to have babies. Although McCoy argues this establishes a pattern of behavior, the judge disagrees, and disallows her testimony.

Time for the verdict. Devastatingly, Munoz is found not guilty. He is ecstatic, and blows a kiss at Cookie, who is shocked.

As the episode ends, the prosecutors leave the office, and Schiff is obviously disturbed. McCoy says to him, "I thought you said you never made this job personal." Schiff replies bitterly, "I lied. Second time in 30 years."

The episode is emotionally affecting -- I just want to finish writing about it so I can stop thinking about it -- but some logical flaws undermine it. Why would Farina tell a virtual stranger he stabbed and raped Cookie, especially when it turns out he was her boyfriend? Why wouldn't McCoy do more to establish Farina's alibi? Why did Cookie's father not seem to know that Farina was Cookie's boyfriend? Why did Cookie lie to everyone for 30 years about the fact that Farina was her boyfriend? The episode attempts to explain this last issue -- by saying Cookie didn't want him to be a suspect -- but not very satisfyingly. How would she know whether Farina was her attacker or not? If she cared about him that much, why didn't her father know the two were involved? There are just too many questions left unresolved in this episode, even though the tone of the episode suggests it has tied up all the loose ends.

Apart from this, the episode is notable because it deals with a 30-year-old case, because Abe Vigoda guest stars, because it involves a case Schiff originally prosecuted, and because McCoy ultimately loses the case.

5.5 White Rabbit

In this episode (5.5), an investigation into the robbery of a safe deposit company leads to the search for a fugitive from a Vietnam-era payroll robbery that resulted in the death of a police officer and was committed to divert funds from the war effort. Briscoe and Logan try to track down the fugitive, and McCoy and Kincaid try to figure out how to prosecute a 23-year-old crime. Famed attorney William Kunstler guest stars as himself [screen cap]. He died the next year.

The episode begins with a security guard and a manager opening a vault at a safe deposit company. Inside, they find another security guard who has been hit over the head, a bunch of empty safe deposit boxes, and a big hole in the floor. Logan and Briscoe investigate. They talk to the security guard once he's at the hospital, and it's clear that he's an alcoholic. At this point, he doesn't have much to say, but the detectives don't seem particularly convinced by his story. They talk to the burglarly squad about the M.O. in the case. They learn that the crew used a powerful hydraulic jack that punched a hole in the floor from the basement. They search the basement, and find a liquor bottle, indicating that someone went down there for drinks. The security guard had told them he had never been down there, but Briscoe (a recovering alcoholic himself) recognizes the signs, and gets the guard to admit that he was down there and that he allow his cousin Eddie to rob the place.

They arrest cousing Eddie at an auto shop (a mere 7 minutes in to the episode), and Eddie reveals the location of the stolen merchandise. While going through the merchandise, the detectives find a duffel bag containing $200,000 and a revolver. Hm! All the merchandise except for this bag is claimed.

The box it came from was registered to a Michael Cavanaugh. They search for Cavanaugh but it turns out he died in 1969. It looks like someone has assumed his identity. The detectives head to the FBI to trace the money. An agent checks the serial numbers of his computer, stiffens a bit, clears his computer screen, excuses himself, and goes to get his boss. His boss comes in and tells the detectives he can't help them. Very suspicious.

Since they get no assistance from the FBI, Briscoe and Logan head to the library to find out what the FBI was involved with back when the money was printed. This unlikely method -- bolstered by the use of microfiche machine -- leads to the discovery that there was a payroll robbery in NYC in 1971. The cash belonged to a defnse contractor. During the robbery, a police officer was killed with a .38, just like the gun in the bag. The money was reportedly stolen to slow down the Vietnam War.

The detectives review this case, and learn that a primary suspect who disappeared is named Susan Forrest. She's been missing for 23 years. They talk to the other conspirators in the case, both of whom are in the penal system. Briscoe and Logan discuss Briscoe's police career back then, and he reveals that he was patrolling the west side back then. They check old arrest records, and learn that a William Goodwin, now a professor, was arrested with Goodwin prior to the robbery. His prints match those on the certificate for the safe deposit box. They also learn that the other female conspirator was arrested in the 1980s after a fluke incident in which a car in a parking lot was involved in an accident. They check the records from that accident, and learn that another car right next to the cars belongs to a woman named Rita Levitan. They drive down to New Jersey to interview her, and she admits that in fact she is Susan Forrest! They arrest her (29 mins).

Kincaid interviews her and she admits the robbery, but denies involvement in the shooting. She says she was throwing up in the bushes when it happened. McCoy is overly sympathetic for her, saying that "it was the 60s" and people got caught up in such stuff. Fittingly, he is confronted by the mother of the police officer killed during the robbery, who wants justice for her dead son.

Schiff announces that Forrest has fired William Kunstler. McCoy continues to express sympathy for Forrest and the atmosphere of the 1960s.

They visit Kunstler and Forrest at Rikers. This is Kunstler's first on screen appearance (38 mins). They learn that Forrest's statement to Kincaid is inadmissible because Kunstler represented her way back in 1971, before she disappeared. Looks like Claire screwed up by not checking the files or asking Forrest. McCoy is angry with her.

At trial (40 mins), Professor Goodwin changes his story, angering with McCoy. Goodwin starts ranting about the injustices of the Vietnam War in an apparent effort to impress Forrest (who he had a big crush on back in the day) by stonewalling McCoy and protecting her. Schiff saves the day, however, by getting access to illegal wiretaps of Forrest and her crew from 1971. They learn that Forrest's role in the robbery was bigger than she admitted: she arranged to get the guns, and she apparently signalled the others regarding the presence of the police officer. McCoy tries to get the other female conspirator, Margaret, to roll on Forrest, and he does so by convincing her that Forrest has sold out. (He even shows her "tomorrow's" copy of the New York Ledger saying that Forrest had sold out her friends and her cause.) At trial, Margaret rolls on Forrest, admitting that Forrest signalled the others about the cop. Forrest agrees toa deal: Manslaughter I, 8 1/3 - 25 years. McCoy concludes the episode by saying, "She'll be in jail til 2003. I think the 60s will be over by then."

The episode is notable because of the presence of Kunstler. The title of the ep refers to the song White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane, a sort of anthem about the craziness of the 60s. And the group involved in the robbery bears resemblances to the radical 1960s/70s Weather Underground.

3.2 Conspiracy

In this episode (3.2), the leader of an African-American political group is assassinated at a rally, and Logan and Cerreta encounter opposition from the group's more militant members as they attempt to find the killer.

The episode begins at the rally, where the leader of the group, Marcus Tate, is giving a rousing, but somewhat balanced, speech about race releations in America. As he leaves the stage, he is surrounded by a crush of people. A shot rings out, panic ensues, and when the scene clears he's on the floor, critically injured. Cerreta and Logan arrive to investigate, and all the witnesses agree on one thing: the shooter is white. They quickly determine that the shooter set off a small explosive device in a trash can to divert attention, and then shot Tate a moment later.

As Logan and Cerreta investigate, they immediately encounter resistance from those close to Tate, including his legal adviser, Mr Books (memorably played by familiar character actor Joe Morton). Books insists that no one talk to the detectives, and explains to them how he was a "punk with a du-rag" before he met Tate.

Without many witness statements to go on, the detectives turn to photos of previous Tate rallies to see if they can identify any white people who appear at many of them. This unlikely technique turns out to work. Mr Cook, one of Tate's bodyguards, comes in to look at the pictures, and is obstinate, but Tate's wife (played by Gloria Foster, familiar to most viewers as The Oracle in The Matrix movies), looks at the pictures and says a white man in them is the man she saw with the gun at her husband's shooting.

A clue in the picture leads them to believe that he is an alumnus of Amherst, so they check the yearbooks at the local Amherst club, and identify the man in the pictures as Mitchell Koblin, class of 1974. They visit his elderly parents, who are defensive. They lead them to Koblin's wife, who turns out to be black, a fact which becomes crucial later on. She says they are now divorced, in part because she couldn't be "black enough" for Koblin. She says he always encouraged her to play up her African background, and this is what got her involved with the AAC, Tate's organization. She tells the detectives, "the blacker I got, the more he wanted me." But she says her husband grew jealous of her relationship with Tate, and suspected something else was going on. There's your motive! She says she doesn't know where to find him, but eventually, through his job, they trace him to the local YMCA, where they find him in the gym. He tries to flee, but Logan tackles him. They find the gun in his gym bag.

He soon lawyers up. His defense lawyer, Gary Lowenthal (played by famed monologuist Eric Bogosian), insists his client is innocent. Olivet examines him to figure out how crazy he is, and then the trial begins (32 mins). Koblin's wife, on the stand, admits an affair with Tate, and then Tate's wife testifies (40 mins). Mr Cook, the bodyguard also testifies, and Lowenthal scores some sort of victory by getting Cook to expose his anti-Semitism on the stand. (Koblin is Jewish). As it begins to look like the case is not going well for the prosecution, Mr Books tells Stone that "the LA riots will be a pillowfight" if Koblin is acquitted. Nonetheless, the verdict comes back (49 mins): not guilty of Murder 2.

Schiff comes up with a solution: go after Koblen for a federal civil rights violation. But Stone and Robinette note some inconsistencies in Mr Cook's story. Earlier in the ep, Cook had said he didn't recognize Koblin in the pictures, but at trial, he said he recognized him at the rally. They begin to suspect that someone within the AAC may have killed Tate. They talk to The Oracle, Tate's wife, about this, and she reacts angrily, saying they couldn't make the case against the white guy, so they're choosing to "blame it on the n*****rs." Robinette and The Oracle have a conversation about race, but Robinette is not distracted. He thinks the Oracle is withholding evidence, and he wants to charge her with conspiracy. They tell Book and Cook that the Oracle rolled on them, but to no avail: the investigators give up on the case, leaving it unsolved.

Perhaps as a result of this, another shooting at the AAC is the subject of a later episode, Entrapment, in which The Oracle also stars.

The episode is notable because of the strong cast -- Joe Morton, Eric Bogosian, The Oracle -- and because of the unusual non-resolution: the case is unresolved, but just because everyone gives up, not (only) because of the not-guilty verdict. Usually on the show when someone is found not guilty, the audience is led to believe that they are, in fact, guilty of the crime of which they are accused. In this instance, however, there is certainly reasonable doubt in our minds as to whether Koblin committed the crime, especially once Cook's inconsistent testimony is factored in.

7.1 Causa Mortis: Jamie Ross's First Episode

In this episode (7.1), the premiere of season 7, Carey Lowell makes her first appearance as ADA Jamie Ross. She and McCoy prosecute a young man for carjacking and murdering a woman who begged for her life.

The episode begins with a woman talking to a young man in a car about how she's dealt with troubled boys before and there is hope for him. She calls him Fernando, and she pleads with him as they drive into a deserted area by the water and he orders her out of the car. She starts praying despite his objections and begs for her life. Cut to Curtis and Briscoe arriving at the scene. The woman his dead, having been hit on the head, but not robbed. They find a ring on her finger: "10/3/82 Forever." Her face and legs have been covered.

They search for witnesses at a homeless encampment, and find a crazy old lady named Sally who says her grocery cart was scraped by the car. They talk to the Medical Examiner (not Rogers) about the cause of death, and they try to trace the car based on the paint from Sally's cart.

Meanwhile, Lt Van Buren talks with Curtis to see how Briscoe is doing regarding the death of Kincaid (in the last episode of the previous season). She asks whether Briscoe is "going to his meetings" (meaning his AA meetings, since he drank in that episode).

Based on the paint and missing persons reports, they visit a house where a babysitter identifies a photo of the victim: it's her boss, Mrs. Rankin. They track down Mr. Rankin, returning from a business trip. He's shell-shocked and says his wife taught adult ed. They retrace her path, and check out gas stations. They search a dumpster and find her wallet, as well as a tape recorder that contains no tape. They re-search the scene, and find the tape, buried in the dirt. Forensics cleans it up, and they listen: it contains an audio recording of Mrs Rankin begging for her life and getting killed. It also makes references to Fernando and his neighborhood, Belmont.

They search for the car, and it turns up in Belmont. An observant beat cop noticed it even though it had been repainted and the plates had been changed. They talk to the purported owner of the car, a young woman named Anna Galvez, who says she purchased it legally from a classified ad.

They note that the registration papers have been forged, so they talk to a forger at Rikers who gives them some helpful information despite the objections of his defense counself (whom Curtis refers to as "Alan Dirt-for-brains," a play on "Alan Dershowitz").

The forger leads them to Victor Driscoll, who fenced the forged documents, and fingers Fernando, who said he wanted the papers for a car for his fiancee. They reinterview Anna Galvez (played by a talented actress). She continues to stonewall, but her mother rolls on her daughter's fiance, Fernando, when she's told that Mrs Rankin was raped (she wasn't). They put together a big raid on the apartment where Fernando is supposedly staying. He isn't there. Curtis and Brsicoe go get some pizza nearby and then return to the apartment, figuring Fernando would have been told that the coast was clear. Sure enough, they catch Fernando and arrest him (28 mins).

ADA Jamie Ross makes her first appearance on the series at Fernando's arraignment, where she rebuts all of Fernando's old-timey lawyer's arguments by citing extensive case law to buttress her opinion. In the very next scene, Schiff assigns Ross to mcCoy and we get some of Jamie's back story: she's been in the office less than six months, she used to be married to Neil Gorton, the defense attorney, and she used to work in his office, too. She also has a kid in daycare.

Anyway, Ross and McCoy meet and discuss the case (31 mins). Ross pushes for Murder 1, but MCoy wants Murder 2. In arguing that it should be a capital case, Ross brings up Mickey Scott, the guy who got the death penalty in Aftershock (the finale of the previous season).

There is a motion to suppress the audio tape since it can't be authenticated any more than 20-40%. The judge suppresses the tape.

As it looks like the case against Fernando is falling apart, Ross brings in a lawyer from the US Attorney's office, Chuck Rodman. Under federal carjacking statutes, it looks like they have a better chance of getting the death penalty for Fernando. McCoy gets angry and dismisses the idea. Rodman is offended.

Back on the investigation, the detectives meet with Ross, and Curtis seems a little smitten with her.

The detectives talk to the guy who repainted the stolen car, and he says that Fernando brought the car in and painted it himself. He also says that Fernando picked out the color three days before the killing, which indicated premeditation.

The arrest Anna because she knew about the crime beforehand, too. They want to get her to roll. In the meantime, Ross discusses how she likes being on the prosecution side of things better. She tells a story about one client she defended who got an erection during testimony about the vicious sex crime he committed, and how she threw her jacket over his lap so the jury wouldn