The Secret Sharers (Season 1, Episode 18)
Premise: A dealer is gunned down in front of a crowd, and no one in the community is willing to say who did it.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 18
- Detectives
- Sgt. Max Greevey (George Dzundza), Det. Mike Logan (Chris Noth)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty), ADA Paul Robinette (Richard Brooks), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- J. D. Cannon as Chet Burton, Paul Calderon as Father Torres, Enrique Munoz as Nicky Guzman, Sully Diaz as Alicia Rivers, Paula Garcés as Lucy Rivers
- Director
- E. W. Swackhamer
- Writers
- Robert Stuart Nathan
Summary
The Investigation
In “The Secret Sharers,” Jose Urbano, a drug dealer with a violent record, is shot to death at a church street fair in East Harlem. Dozens of people were nearby, but no one admits to seeing anything. Greevey and Logan suspect the killing was personal and begin working through Urbano’s enemies. The placement of the wounds suggests anger rather than business, and an early suspect, Luis Cartagena (called Hector in the episode), who had served time with Urbano at Attica and argued with him over money, does not hold up.
The murder weapon turns out to be a gun registered to the grandmother of Alicia Rivers, and her arrest finally shakes the truth loose. Urbano had raped Alicia’s sister, Lucy, and Lucy’s boyfriend, Nicky Guzman, shot him in revenge. The neighborhood, including the parish priest, Father Torres, had closed ranks to protect a young man many saw as justified. To many of Urbano’s neighbors, the shooting looks less like a murder than a long-overdue settling of accounts.
The Trial
Stone charges Nicky with murder and refuses to treat revenge as a defense, even as pressure builds to settle for a lenient plea. Public defender Shambala Green steps aside for Chet Burton, a flamboyant Texas trial lawyer who has never lost a case, and he openly appeals to the jury’s sympathy for a man who avenged the woman he loved.
The judge limits some of the evidence Stone wants to use, and Burton works to raise doubts about the night of the shooting and about Urbano himself. Stone is fighting on two fronts: against a showman in the courtroom and against a neighborhood that sees the defendant as someone who did what the system would not.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury acquits Nicky despite strong evidence that he killed Urbano. Stone concludes that the jurors knew Nicky was guilty and chose to free him anyway, and he is troubled less by the loss than by what it says about a jury deciding to set the evidence aside.
Why it stands out
- J. D. Cannon plays Chet Burton, an outsized defense lawyer who dominates the courtroom.
- It is one of the season’s clearest losses for the prosecution, decided by sympathy rather than doubt.
- The case examines a community’s choice to protect one of its own.