A Losing Season (Season 11, Episode 14)
Premise: A pregnant bank loan officer is found shot in the trunk of a stolen car, and the case moves from two car thieves to a drug dealer, a hired gunman and a professional basketball player.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 11, Episode 14
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Abbie Carmichael (Angie Harmon), DA Nora Lewin (Dianne Wiest)
- Guest stars
- Kevin Daniels as Chris Cody, Dorian Missick as Henry Williams, Michael Kenneth Williams as Marcus Cole, James Rebhorn as Charles Garnett, Albert Jones as Miles Hawthorne
- Director
- Jace Alexander
- Writers
- Barry Schindel & Wendy Battles
Summary
The Investigation
“A Losing Season” begins when two young car thieves rear-end a couple’s Cadillac and flee, leaving a stolen Camry with bank loan officer Dena Meredith shot in its trunk. She is 29 weeks pregnant; doctors deliver her son by cesarean section, but she later dies. Her fiancé, bank manager Miles Hawthorne, thought she was dining with her friend Cheryl Treadwell, who believed she was going home. A stolen car radio leads to chop-shop operator Bob Sarkisian, who names Gabor Hartunian, and the thieves say they took the car from a West Side lot without looking in the trunk.
A bar charge places Meredith at Lot 61 shortly before the shooting, where she left with two men. A parking attendant recalls a man named Henry and a champagne Lexus, which belongs to basketball player Chris Cody. Cody denies knowing her, but the Lexus loan was hers, and his friend Henry Williams is a convicted dealer. Treadwell says Meredith wrote large loans for Cody that went to Williams, and the team reveals Cody’s secret drug rehab and his ties to parolee Marcus Cole. Cole’s .45 turns up in a parole search, and he says Williams paid him $18,000 on Cody’s behalf. Cody flees to his mother’s house with a gun, and Briscoe and Green talk him into surrendering.
The Trial
Cody claims the $18,000 covered Williams’s drug debt. Told that Cody has turned on him, Williams accepts 20 years to life and says Cody fathered Meredith’s baby and wanted her dead to avoid child support. Cole testifies that he forced Meredith into the trunk and shot her in a parking lot, but admits everything he knows about Cody came through Williams. Defense attorney Charles Garnett argues that his client had no idea the baby was his.
On cross, McCoy walks Cody through a life of others covering for him, from college grades to the hidden rehab, and confronts him with his remark at the surrender that he tried to warn her. In summation McCoy argues that Cody had two motives: silencing a witness to the drug loans and escaping child support.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Cody of first-degree murder, leaving him facing life without parole. Meredith’s son is reported to be doing well.
Why it stands out
- Michael Kenneth Williams plays hired gunman Marcus Cole.
- A parolee’s signed consent to searches defeats his challenge to the seizure of the murder weapon.
- Briscoe and Green talk an armed, distraught Cody into surrendering at his mother’s house.