Return (Season 11, Episode 5)
Premise: When the son of a murdered store owner’s partner flees to Tel Aviv to avoid a murder-for-hire charge, the DA’s office has to fight Israel’s Law of Return to bring him back.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 11, Episode 5
- 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
- Evan Handler as Eli Becker, Sam Schacht as Nathan Becker, Bruce Altman as defense attorney Brad Feldman, Joe Maruzzo as Sal Bonafiglio, Bruce Ornstein as Councilman Lev Berenson
- Director
- Stephen Wertimer
- Writers
- Aaron Zelman
Summary
The Investigation
“Return” opens with the murder of Saul Caplan, co-owner of the Lower East Side leather shop Becker & Caplan, found in the store’s cellar after an apparent break-in, shot in the shoulder and then in the back of the head. A stolen coat leads from a drag queen called Toreador to stock clerk Ronnie Ortega, who admits pilfering but has an alibi. A lab test shows the cellar padlock was opened before it was damaged, so the detectives turn to stockroom worker Sal Bonafiglio, a convicted burglar, and his old partner, ex-boxer Eddie Novello, who has a store coat in his gym bag and admits Sal paid him $5,000 to kill Caplan.
Sal’s parole officer points to an after-hours club, where a worker says Sal spent time with a bald man who sold leather coats for cocaine. He is Eli Becker, the adopted son of Caplan’s partner, Nathan, and the store’s records show Eli falsified inventory lists to hide thousands in stolen coats every month. Before police can pick him up, Nathan helps him fly to Israel.
The Trial
An Israeli official says Eli, a citizen with an apartment in Tel Aviv, cannot be extradited and will be tried there instead. City councilman Lev Berenson presses Lewin and McCoy to let it go. Carmichael learns Eli’s birth mother was Catholic and persuades a Brooklyn rabbinical court that his conversion was never completed. Ruled not Jewish, Eli is sent back to New York, and Sal takes a manslaughter deal to testify that Eli paid him $10,000 to arrange the killing.
Ortega testifies that Eli’s inventory lists were wrong, and Sal describes the stolen coats and the payment. On the stand Eli admits buying cocaine but denies the murder. McCoy confronts him with a police report saying he threatened Caplan’s grandson, David, and suggests Eli resented being treated as an employee rather than an heir. Over McCoy’s objection, Lewin agrees to Berenson’s push to let Eli serve any sentence in Israel and authorizes an offer.
Spoiler, the ending: Urged by his mother, Eli pleads guilty to second-degree murder for 20 years to life, to be served in an Israeli prison. McCoy believes political pressure got Eli special treatment, but he concludes that for once in his life Eli did not get away with something.
Why it stands out
- Israel’s Law of Return lets the suspect claim sanctuary, and the case turns on whether an adopted son’s conversion to Judaism was valid.
- McCoy and a councilman spar over the real-life cases of Jonathan Pollard and Samuel Sheinbein, a Maryland murder suspect who was tried in Israel.
- Lewin sides with political and religious appeals over McCoy’s strong objections in deciding where Eli will serve his sentence.