Zuma Canyon 

Detective Winters is killed while investigating a Mexican cartel responsible for a massacre at a Quinceanera, and Morales tries to get the DA's office to cash in every favor possible to guarantee justice.

Director:

Tom DiCillo

Writers:

Dick Wolf (created by), Blake Masters (developed by)

Stars:

Skeet Ulrich, Corey Stoll, Rachel Ticotin

Cast

Episode cast overview, first billed only:
Skeet Ulrich	...	Detective Rex Winters
Corey Stoll	...	Detective Tomas Jaruszalski
Rachel Ticotin	...	Lieutenant Arleen Gonzalez
Regina Hall	...	Evelyn Price
Mark Parra	...	Jose
Alfred Molina	...	Senior D.D.A. Ricardo Morales
Peter Coyote	...	D.A. Jerry Hardin
Teri Polo	...	Casey Winters
Jose Pablo Cantillo	...	Cesar Vargas
Al Espinosa	...	Consul Ortega
Quinton Lopez	...	Fernando Ramirez
Ray Santiago	...	Ray Mota
Victor Rivers	...	Mexican Consular Official
Charles Rahi Chun	...	Mitch Pellington
Ashley Bravo	...	Liana Alcazar

Storyline

Businessman Alcazar's family and guests are shot by masked men at his daughter's 15 birthday party. He recently conceived and abandoned a real estate deal in a canyon valley, where the team finds a huge marijuana field and a scared-stiff, abuse-trained Mexican 'watchman', Fernando Ramirez. They trace it to a Mexican drug cartel, but the fiends find and murder Rex at home. Deputy D.A. Ricardo Morales spare no effort or risk in the case, but ends up resigning after the D.A. cuts his losses, having had to call markers to get past a Mexican consul in cahoots and offer the whole Ramirez family 'political asylum', only to lose the crucial testimony in a spectacularly cruel way.

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Plot Keywords:

boy | jail | prison | drug trade | contraband | 

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Genres:

Crime | Drama | Mystery | Thriller

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Certificate:

TV-14

Did You Know?

Trivia

This episode takes place in January 2011.

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Goofs

ADA Morales says that they cannot refile charges against Cesar Vargas after the judge dismissed the charges due to insufficient evidence. However jeopardy had not yet attached to Vargas' case, in a jury trial jeopardy attaches when the jury is empaneled and sworn in. Fernando Ramirez was murdered during a pre-trial hearing to determine whether the state had sufficient evidence to bind Vargas over for a trial by jury, Morales even said as much during his opening statement just seconds before the judge's law clerk got the call notifying the judge about Fernando being killed. The process of jury selection doesn't start until the judge rules that the prosecution has sufficient evidence to go to trial, and once that happens there can be as much as a few weeks in between starting the jury selection process and the jury being selected and sworn in. So this case was nowhere near having jeopardy attach to it. If/when additional evidence was found tying Vargas to the murder of Detective Winters and the Alcazar family, Morales would of been free to rearrest Vargas and refile murder charges against him.

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Connections

Featured in Law & Order Goes West (2011)

User Reviews

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English Spanish

Release Date:

11 April 2011 (USA)

Filming Locations:

Los Angeles, California, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Wolf Films, Universal Media Studios (UMS)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

60 min

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.78 : 1