"Law & Order" Scoundrels (1994)

User Rating:

6.7/10   

Director:

Marc Laub

Writers:

Dick Wolf (creator)
Ed Zuckerman (writer) ...

TV Series:

"Law & Order" (1990)

Original Air Date:

30 November 1994 (Season 5, Episode 9)

Genre:

Crime | Mystery | Drama

Plot:

An attorney may have been killed for trying to further bilk people who have lost their life savings in an S&L scandal. |

Plot Keywords:

Attorney | Detective | Police | District Attorney | Evidence

Cast

Jerry Orbach	...	Detective Lennie Briscoe
Chris Noth	...	Detective Mike Logan
S. Epatha Merkerson	...	Lt. Anita Van Buren
Sam Waterston	...	Executive A.D.A. Jack McCoy
Jill Hennessy	...	A.D.A. Claire Kincaid
Steven Hill	...	D.A. Adam Schiff
Michael Zaslow	...	Willard Tappan
Jonathan Hogan	...	John Curren
Edie Falco	...	Sally Bell
Lisa Emery	...	Alice Huntley
Larry Pine	...	Edward St. John
Jane Hoffman	...	Jane Rosebrock
David Little	...	Fred Dillon
Georgine Hall	...	Mrs. Greenfield
Yusef Bulos	...	Frank Rosebrock

Company:

Wolf Films

A ridiculous reach....

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I realize this is a fictional TV show, but this episode really stretches the credibility to the breaking point. The suspension of disbelief (to borrow a line from McCoy in another episode) is not made of taffy.

The episode starts off with the formula beginning of Act I. The victim, Arthur Kopinsky, a lawyer, is discovered shot in the head by his secretary and office partner.

Briscoe and Logan quickly discover that the victim was running a scam on the victims of an S&L swindler named Willard Tappan (very transparently modeled on Charles Keating right down to the MO Keating allegedly used: selling customers uninsured bonds instead of opening Federally ensured savings/checking).

They quickly home in on one of the victims (named John Curran) whom Tappan had swindled out of nearly a million dollars.

McCoy and Kincaid, during the trial of Curran for the murder, discover that Tappan has hidden illegally $5M in an offshore account and that the murder victim had discovered the money. They also discover that Kopinsky was blackmailing Tappan.

Kincaid then discovers a connection between (a 12 minute phone call) Tappan and the killer Curran.

This (Act III) is where the story loses all credibility.

McCoy concocts a theory that Tappan is responsible for the murder because he pointed Curran at Kopinsky! "Curran was dynamite..." It just doesn't make any sense. The only thing McCoy has proved is that the two men talked! On the witness stand, Curran, the actual killer, claims, without any proof offered, that Tappan told him he would pay Curran to kill Kopinsky out of the hidden $5,000,000.

I can't believe this would pass the smell test. McCoy could almost certainly have gotten Tappan indicted by a grand jury. But I can't believe that the indictment that would have survived a preliminary hearing.

When Tappan takes the stand in his own defense, McCoy introduces the fact that Tappan had been convicted of defrauding 14,000 of his customers. It's clear that jury convict Tappan because of his prior bad acts and not the murder.

Under the law, accomplice testimony is worthless without corroboration. McCoy presents none. As far as I know the judge would have had to dismiss the case.

McCoy even admits to Adam and Claire that he was counting on the hatred of Tappan by the jury to convict him. And that's exactly what happened.

I admit I'm not a lawyer but I just don't see that McCoy made a prima facia case.

In fact, in the epilogue McCoy admits to Kincaid that he suborned Curran's perjury in order to convict Tappan. "Heaven's to Betsy, Claire, what a dreadful idea!" The case would never survive on appeal even though the meat head judge allowed the trial to go forward.

I love this show but sometimes the writers really go overboard.