School Daze (Season 11, Episode 22)
Premise: A masked student opens fire in a New York City high school cafeteria and escapes, and the hunt for the shooter runs through several troubled teenagers before landing on one.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 11, Episode 22
- 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
- Carey Lowell as Jamie Ross, Timothy Reifsnyder as Henry Semple, Robert Emmet Lunney as Bill Semple, Michael Shulman as Kevin Miller, J. K. Simmons as Dr. Emil Skoda
- Director
- Richard Dobbs
- Writers
- Story: Dick Wolf; Teleplay: Barry Schindel & Eric Overmyer
Summary
The Investigation
“School Daze” begins with a school shooting at George Mason High, where a gunman in black with his face covered fires into the lunchroom, reloads, kills four students, wounds eleven and slips out through the kitchen. Senior Kevin Miller recorded the attack on his new video camera, but the footage never shows a face. A classmate’s hunch points to Howard Earl, a small, angry 16-year-old with a box-cutter suspension on his record. After a street chase and an arrest captured by news photographers, his lawyer, Simone Adams, proves he was visiting his mother at Bedford Hills prison during the shooting.
A guidance counselor next suggests Colleen Jacobs, a transfer student who once talked about killing her tormentors, but she had moved to a Catholic school and was in therapy at the time. When the student council president receives an e-mail from “Ninja Nightmare” vowing to finish the job, Briscoe and Green press the school psychologist, whose own daughter attends the school, for a name without waiting for a court order. She names Henry Semple, a new arrival expelled from three private schools. At the Semple home Henry draws a pistol, and ballistics ties it to the shooting.
The Trial
Semple, 16, is charged with four counts of second-degree murder and eleven of attempted murder and held at Rikers, though his wealthy parents offer to pay for a private psychiatric hospital. They hire former ADA Jamie Ross, who shows the e-mail had been traced to New Orleans almost an hour before the detectives went to the Semple home. With no emergency to excuse the psychologist’s breach of privilege, the judge suppresses the gun and dismisses the charges, and furious victims’ families learn Semple is home with his parents.
Pressed by the detectives, Miller admits a classmate named Paul told him to bring his camera; Paul says Semple showed him the gun beforehand and that bullies had urinated on one of Semple’s drawings. The case is refiled. Ross seeks a civil commitment, citing a childhood fall from a horse, but Skoda finds Semple understood right from wrong, and a scan shows no brain damage. At trial, Bill Semple testifies that his son confessed to him on the day of the shooting and regretted missing some of the students he hated.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury finds Henry Semple guilty on all four murder counts. His father plans to ask for leniency at sentencing, but the prosecutors expect the 16-year-old to spend his life in prison.
Why it stands out
- Carey Lowell returns as Jamie Ross, now a defense attorney facing her former partner, McCoy.
- The episode drew 21.55 million U.S. viewers, the largest audience of any Season 11 episode.
- The prosecution collapses when the murder weapon is ruled fruit of a privileged disclosure, and is revived only by the defendant’s own father.