Judge Dread (Season 11, Episode 23)
Premise: A hard-line Manhattan judge survives a shooting outside the courthouse, and the dead gunman’s trail leads to a white-collar defendant she sent to Rikers.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 11, Episode 23
- 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
- Roxanne Hart as Judge Linda Karlin, David Wohl as Randall Wylie, Tovah Feldshuh as Danielle Melnick, Scott Sowers as Jimmy McGowan, Carolee Carmello as Janice Wylie
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Richard Sweren & Aaron Zelman
Summary
The Investigation
“Judge Dread” opens with an attempted murder as Judge Linda Karlin, known for handing out maximum sentences, arrives at court. A gunman charges her firing a .38, and her bodyguard, Detective Hill, is wounded but kills him. Karlin, back on the bench the same day, offers little help. A threatening note left in a courthouse holding pen leads to a newly released inmate, Evan Bruce, who admits writing it but denies the shooting. The gun’s restored serial number traces it from the Lodi, New Jersey, police to bar owner Vince Ellis, who says his nephew, Frank Morris, took it.
New Jersey state police suspected Morris of killing a witness in a Camden heroin case after visiting the defendant in prison. Using the alias John Sheppard, Morris also visited Rikers inmate Randall Wylie, an accountant facing securities-fraud charges before Karlin, eight days before the attack. Wylie claims the visit was a mix-up, but his records show a call from Rikers to Ellis’s bar and a $100,000 withdrawal from his daughters’ college fund three days before the shooting.
The Trial
Prosecutors learn Karlin rejected a two-to-six plea for Wylie and jailed him as a flight risk after his wife made a same-day trip to the Cayman Islands. The $100,000 turns out to be the trial fee of his lawyer, Danielle Melnick. Jimmy McGowan, an arsonist who served as a suicide-watch aide on Wylie’s tier, says Wylie raged about Karlin and planned to have someone outside deal with her, and he wins a minimum sentence for his help. Wylie is charged with attempted murder.
On the stand, Karlin defends her sentences of hundreds of years and shrugs off a heroin brand that carries her picture and the name “Judge Dread.” McGowan repeats his account. Wylie then testifies that McGowan fed his terror of Karlin, pushed the idea of a killer and set up the meeting with Morris, who mentioned his children’s school when Wylie tried to back out. Lewin concludes that if McGowan may have steered Wylie into the plot, Wylie should not serve 25 to life.
Spoiler, the ending: On the eve of cross-examination, McCoy offers Wylie 12½ to 25 years, and he takes the deal. Karlin confronts Lewin over the lenient sentence, vows to keep presiding over his fraud case and plans a victim impact statement at sentencing.
Why it stands out
- Heroin dealers sell packets stamped with Judge Karlin’s face under the brand name “Judge Dread,” which gives the episode its title.
- Tovah Feldshuh appears as defense attorney Danielle Melnick.
- The prosecution’s own jailhouse witness may have pushed the defendant into the plot, leading McCoy to cut the defendant’s sentence.