Sophomore Jinx (Season 1, Episode 6)
Premise: A college sophomore is found dead after a party for her school’s basketball team, and the detectives push past a university protecting its players to find out what happened to her.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 6
- Starring
- Det. Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay), Det. Elliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni), Det. John Munch (Richard Belzer), Det. Monique Jeffries (Michelle Hurd), Det. Brian Cassidy (Dean Winters), Capt. Donald Cragen (Dann Florek)
- Guest stars
- Lothaire Bluteau as James Henri Rousseau, Sean Squire as Chuck Mosley, Kohl Sudduth as Riley Couger, Angie Harmon as ADA Abbie Carmichael, Al Sharpton as himself
- Director
- Clark Johnson
- Writers
- Story: Wendy West & John Chambers; Written by: John Chambers
Summary
“Sophomore Jinx” starts with Stabler catching Maureen sneaking in at 2:30 a.m. and grounding her, just before he is called to St. Raymond’s University. A sophomore, Jeanne Gallagher, lies dead near her dorm with a head wound, her underwear missing and a blood-alcohol level of 0.27 after a party for the school’s basketball team. The priest who runs the university, McCourt, offers an internal inquiry and little else.
Jeanne was a “hostess,” one of the women who help the team and are expected to keep players and recruits happy. Her roommate, Shelley Brown, says Jeanne stayed a hostess because she depended on the perks and her scholarship, and that she began drinking after the team’s Sweet Sixteen celebrations. Player Riley Couger, who was at an alumnus’s party with the mayor that night, points to teammate Chuck Mosley, who admits arguing with Jeanne; Mosley is held because his alibi, his mother, is on a bus to Louisiana. Campus doctor Sara Goodnall reveals that a basketball player raped Jeanne two months earlier and that she became pregnant and had an abortion.
Word on campus names Couger, who claims he spent that night in campus police custody. Cragen, himself an alumnus with an old grudge against campus security, presses the officer who logged Couger in, and the officer admits the entry was false. The lab finds a very low sperm count in the semen from Jeanne’s body, so players must give samples over McCourt’s objections. Mosley admits he had sex with Jeanne, using a condom, before the party; both players test normal, and Mosley’s mother confirms his curfew.
Suspicion shifts to French literature professor James Henri Rousseau, who stared at Jeanne, turned up wherever she went and has faced complaints of sexual misconduct since 1976. The detectives realize Jeanne may have hit the stone steps rather than been struck, and his teaching assistant, Becky Underwood, shows them Jeanne’s schedule among his papers. Arrested in his classroom, Rousseau says he watched Jeanne with Mosley, then saw her trip on the steps and die, and that he carried her into the garden and had sex with her body.
With no witness to a push, his lawyer offers a plea to sex with a dead body, a one-year misdemeanor; Rousseau is told that obstruction and disturbing a crime scene will add a year each, served consecutively.
Spoiler, the ending: Stabler and Maureen make up after she admits she lied. Munch apologizes to Mosley, who has lost a year of eligibility and is moving to Tulane. A prosecutor has said hearsay could bring the earlier rape before a grand jury, and Munch tells Mosley that Couger may be indicted, but nothing is resolved on screen.
Why it stands out
- The Rev. Al Sharpton makes a special appearance as himself.
- Angie Harmon makes a special appearance as ADA Abbie Carmichael of Law & Order.
- Cragen reveals he went to St. Raymond’s and that his leg was broken in 1964 by a drunk student whom campus police let off.