Indifference (Season 1, Episode 9)
Premise: A little girl who can’t be woken at school becomes the center of a case about a family where drugs and violence went unchecked for years.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 1, Episode 9
- 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
- David Groh as Dr. Jacob Lowenstein, Marcia Jean Kurtz as Carla Lowenstein, Lorraine Toussaint as public defender Shambala Green, Sarah Rowland Doroff as Didi Lowenstein
- Ripped from the headlines
- Based on the 1987 death of six-year-old Lisa Steinberg in New York City.
- Director
- James Quinn
- Writers
- Robert Palm
Summary
The Investigation
In “Indifference,” six-year-old Didi Lowenstein is found gravely injured, and Greevey and Logan go to her family’s comfortable Manhattan apartment. Her mother, Carla, is disoriented and bruised and offers little explanation. Her father, Jacob, an unlicensed psychotherapist who practices from an office in the Graybar Building, blames his wife.
The detectives uncover a household run on cocaine and fear. Jacob is a drug user who abuses Carla, and Carla, under his influence, has hurt Didi. Warnings from people outside the family went unanswered. A neighbor eventually describes what he saw and heard on the night Didi was hurt, and the detectives intervene in time to protect the couple’s younger son. Prosecutors later learn how Jacob pays for the household: he sells cocaine to his own patients, mixing his practice with his drug supply.
The Trial
Didi dies, and both parents are charged. Carla’s lawyer, public defender Shambala Green, presents her as a battered woman acting under Jacob’s control. Carla admits striking her daughter while high, agrees to plead to a lesser charge and testifies that Jacob drove the abuse. She also testifies that Jacob sexually abused their daughter. Her plea turns her from a co-defendant into the prosecution’s most important witness against her husband, and her account of life in the apartment is harrowing.
Jacob denies any responsibility and becomes combative in court. Stone sets out to prove that, whoever struck Didi, Jacob found his daughter badly hurt and did nothing to get her help. Stone also uses the cocaine dealing to show the jury who Jacob is behind the language of therapy, and to undercut his picture of himself as the calm, responsible parent.
Spoiler, the ending: Using crime-scene evidence that Jacob saw his injured daughter and left her without calling for help, Stone wins a conviction for second-degree murder by depraved indifference. Jacob is sentenced to 25 years to life; Carla receives seven to ten years for manslaughter.
Why it stands out
- The episode ends with a spoken disclaimer explaining how it differs from the Steinberg case.
- Jacob Lowenstein returns in the Season 15 episode “Fixed” after his parole.
- The title names the legal theory, depraved indifference, that secures the father’s conviction.