Law & Order: Trial by Jury (TV Series) 41 Shots (2005) User Reviews

Blowing Smoke

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 20 February 2013]

This second episode of Trial By Jury marked the farewell performance of Jerry Orbach as Detective Lennie Briscoe, possibly one of the most popular characters ever to appear on television. The Law And Order franchise survived, but was never as popular.

Rapper Anthony 'Treach' Criss is our perpetrator here, he's a cop killer, he shot at several cops trying to serve a warrant and killed one of them. He's got a high price defense lawyer in Peter Coyote and he's good at blowing smoke in the jury's eyes. Remember it only takes one to hang the jury.

Some more people make some appearances to bind the show to the Law And Order prime show. We find out that Carey Lowell who was Sam Waterston's second chair for a few seasons has now become a judge. I remember on the prime show she was facing disbarment. Now how she got out of it and became a judge would make an interesting episode on SVU since that's the last running Law And Order show.

Candice Bergen makes a second appearance as a trial judge, but the dual between Bebe Neuwirth/Amy Carlson team and Peter Coyote is really quite the battle of capable adversaries. As for Treach, with what comes out at trial, no matter what the verdict this guy has not got a promising existence.

And this review is dedicated to Jerry Orbach who for years I enjoyed in every part he ever played and to Detective Lennie Briscoe whose trenchant observations on love, life, and marriage enlivened many a Law And Order show. RIP Jerry Orbach.

Stretching the premise by episode two

[ltdab · 6/10 · 23 June 2014]

There's what this episode really wants to be about, and what the episode is actually about due to the premise of the show. The circumstance is a defendant who killed a police officer and was shot a number of times in return. The episode sets him up as a very greedy man, along with his lawyer, who wants to sue the police department for his injuries. That would be an interesting case, whether the police department is liable. Unfortunately it's not a criminal case. Trial By Jury is about criminal cases, and so we see the defendant being tried for the murder of the police officer. We are given a jury that is hesitant to convict such an injured man. This never quite comes across as believable. He killed cop, and doesn't dispute killing the cop. His self-defense argument is propped up with mentions of police corruption that are poorly explained. The viewer doesn't believe for a second that the jury will really let a cop killer go without more powerful evidence than the episode provides. If it had been about whether the police had used excessive force, that would be an episode worth watching.