Law & Order Season 12 Episode Guide
Plot summaries for the twelfth season of Law & Order, which aired on NBC from September 2001 to May 2002, featuring Det. Lennie Briscoe, Det. Ed Green, Lt. Anita Van Buren, Executive ADA Jack McCoy, ADA Serena Southerlyn and DA Nora Lewin.
- 1
Who Let the Dogs Out?
A teacher out with her terrier is killed by a pit bull in Riverside Park, and the hunt for its owner runs through a dogfighting ring to a convicted killer in Attica and the lawyer and her husband who handled his business.
- 2
Armed Forces
A shoeshine man stabbed in a Tribeca alley turns out to be a decorated Vietnam veteran who was about to reveal what his squad really did in a village in 1969.
- 3
For Love or Money
A paroled thief shot in a West Side parking lot turns out to have been paid to kill a wealthy electronics retailer, and the trail leads to the man’s widow and her college-age daughter.
- 4
Soldier of Fortune
A diamond dealer is seized at gunpoint in an attack that kills two people, and the case leads to $100 million in conflict diamonds, soldiers from Sierra Leone and the head of the world’s dominant diamond cartel.
- 5
Possession
An eccentric rent-control tenant is stabbed outside her Madison Avenue penthouse, and suspicion moves from the janitor she helped to her feuding landlady, the landlady’s estranged brother and finally the building’s agent.
- 6
Formerly Famous
When a washed-up singer’s much younger wife is shot minutes after they leave his favorite pub, the detectives look at his manager, his grown sons and a custody deal that hid a secret about the couple’s baby.
- 7
Myth of Fingerprints
The death of a drug dealer leads to a man trying to prove his brother’s innocence, and the inquiry exposes a fingerprint examiner whose testimony sent two innocent men to prison in the case that made Van Buren a lieutenant.
- 8
The Fire This Time
A fire in a new apartment building put up over a community garden kills a schoolteacher, and the case leads to three young eco-radicals and the activist whose website seems to steer them to targets.
- 9
3 Dawg Night
When an aspiring DJ is shot in a crowded nightclub after insulting a hip-hop star, the evidence points at the star, but his silence protects someone else.
- 10
Prejudice
A Black magazine executive is shot after an argument over a taxi, and his killer’s lawyer argues that extreme racism is a mental illness that excuses murder.
- 11
The Collar
A priest is shot dead while hearing confessions, and the only man who can explain why is a fellow priest who refuses to repeat what the killer once told him.
- 12
Undercovered
A health insurance supervisor is killed with a hammer, and the man charged argues he had to do it because the company had refused the one drug that might save his nine-year-old daughter.
- 13
DR 1-102
Southerlyn talks a double murderer into freeing his hostage by letting him think she is there as his lawyer, and the move wins a plea but puts her law license on trial.
- 14
Missing
The disappearance of a 24-year-old state aide leads to the head of the State Gaming Board, a married family friend who denies any affair while his old buddy confesses to her murder.
- 15
Access Nation
A young psychologist is stabbed to death by a paroled rapist she was treating, and the prosecutors pursue the online data company that sold him her private history.
- 16
Born Again
An adopted girl with severe behavioral problems dies during an unlicensed rebirthing session, and McCoy must sort out how much blame belongs to the therapist and how much to the mother who brought her there.
- 17
Girl Most Likely
The killing of a principled private-school student points first to the athletes she reported, then to a secret that her best friend was desperate to keep.
- 18
Equal Rights
When a Wall Street analyst is gunned down on his way to the ferry, the trail runs past a collapsed tech stock to his wife, who says years of beatings drove her to have him killed.
- 19
Slaughter
The stabbing of a student looking into a meat plant leads McCoy past the killer to the fast-food executive who kept buying tainted beef.
- 20
Dazzled
When a much younger second wife plunges from a rooftop, the suspects include her husband, her former boyfriend and the husband’s embittered ex-wife, but the answer lies inside the family.
- 21
Foul Play
A retired detective turned private eye is shot with his own gun in an empty Washington Heights apartment, and the case leads into a youth baseball league fielding an overage star.
- 22
Attorney Client
A defense attorney’s wife is shot in his car, and the hunt for a vengeful client gives way to evidence that the lawyer staged the killing himself.
- 23
Oxymoron
A cosmetic dermatologist found strangled and dumped from a car turns out to have been writing forged painkiller prescriptions for a mobster’s son.
- 24
Patriot
A gas explosion in a tenement covers up the murder of an undocumented Yemeni man, and his killer, a Gulf War veteran, claims he was fighting terrorism.