Deep Vote (Season 11, Episode 24)
Premise: A former teacher is shot dead in her car in Tribeca, and the detectives discover the bullet was meant for an investigative reporter digging into a close State Senate election.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 11, Episode 24
- 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
- Deborah Hedwall as Senator Anne Benton, Kate Jennings Grant as Kate Pierce, Dan Grimaldi as Albert Bennato, Peter Jay Fernandez as Matthew Coulter, Joe Grifasi as defense attorney James Linde
- Director
- Jace Alexander
- Writers
- William N. Fordes & Matt Witten
Summary
The Investigation
“Deep Vote” opens with the murder of Martha Krasner, 31, a former teacher shot behind the ear with a hollow-point round as she drives through Tribeca, sending her car into a collision. A road-rage theory fades once an SUV driver comes forward, and her husband Elliot and her dot-com cousin Jeff Waites lead nowhere. Phone records show she parked in a friend’s building garage on short notice, and its security video reveals an identical Volvo driven by another redhead: investigative reporter Kate Pierce, who uses the gym there every morning.
A green Buick seen in the garage, stolen from a rabbi’s synagogue lot, leads through a teenage buyer to junkyard worker Jimmy Coleman, who was paid to crush it. Prints on the cash identify hit man Marty Blatt, and matching hollow-points turn up in his apartment. The detectives suspect the Caputo crime family, the subject of one of Pierce’s stories, but Blatt says small-time hood Albert Bennato hired him over an election.
Pierce had been covering the 63rd District State Senate race, which Senator Anne Benton won by fewer than 200 votes, but she will not name her source. Carmichael retraces Pierce’s interviews and learns that twelve voting machines failed at one polling place. Mechanic Joey Eckert admits Bennato asked him to sabotage them, Benton once served as Bennato’s lawyer, and sign-in books show 1,865 paper ballots missing from the official count.
The Trial
Arrested, Bennato names Benton as the one who ordered the hit and hands over four boxes of the missing ballots to sweeten his deal. Benton is charged with murder and conspiracy and released without bail, and Carmichael tells McCoy she plans to leave for a job at the U.S. Attorney’s office once the case ends. A judge lets the Board of Elections count the ballots, which run about 70 percent against Benton, until the Appellate Division halts the count on a three-to-two vote.
Left with only Bennato’s word, McCoy goes back to Pierce and argues that Krasner never got to choose whether to become part of her story, and Pierce gives up her source.
Spoiler, the ending: Matthew Coulter, introduced earlier as Benton’s chief of staff and chairman of her reelection committee, takes the stand and testifies that he knows both Bennato and Benton. The episode ends before a verdict.
Why it stands out
- This is Angie Harmon’s last appearance as ADA Abbie Carmichael, who leaves for the U.S. Attorney’s office.
- The episode aired on May 23, 2001, the same night as “Judge Dread.”
- Prosecutors try to prove motive by counting stolen ballots, only to have an appellate court stop the count.