DR 1-102 (Season 12, Episode 13)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 12, Episode 13
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Serena Southerlyn (Elisabeth Röhm), DA Nora Lewin (Dianne Wiest)
- Guest stars
- Gene Silvers as Raymond Hobbs, John Benjamin Hickey as Aaron Solomon, Debrah Ellen Waller as Alicia Williams, Susan Blackwell as defense attorney Lydia Fernands, Craig Gass as Mark Grandy
- Director
- Richard Dobbs
- Writers
- Marc Guggenheim & Aaron Zelman
Summary
The Investigation
“DR 1-102” opens with a double murder: roommates Cynthia Hall and Susan Haley, both 24, are found bludgeoned in their apartment while a party goes on across the hall. A drunk party crasher, Mark Grandy, is cleared but says he saw a man in a gray shirt and blue pants leave the apartment. A crime scene technician’s blood-absorption test, together with Hall’s movements that night, shows the women died more than an hour apart, so the killer was already inside when Hall came home. Her coworker Matt Tagert, who had been out buying heroin with her, is in a bar with witnesses.
With no forced entry, the detectives focus on keys. A building repairman named Serge has no alibi, but the trail leads to a hardware store whose owner’s nephew, Raymond Hobbs, cuts keys there on weekends. In his room they find clippings about break-ins in which women woke to find an intruder in the bedroom. Spotted by police, Hobbs seizes a woman in a drugstore and holds a knife to her throat, demanding a lawyer.
Southerlyn, sent to observe, offers to go in. She shows Hobbs her driver’s license and bar card, and he says he never meant to hurt the girls and asks her to explain that for him. He releases the hostage, Alicia Williams, and surrenders.
The Trial
Defense attorney Lydia Fernands argues that Hobbs asked for counsel and got a prosecutor instead. Southerlyn must step aside as a witness, Grandy’s line-up identification is weak, and the judge excludes the clippings and Southerlyn’s account of Hobbs’s words. McCoy instead calls Williams, whose testimony the judge allows, and Hobbs pleads guilty to second-degree murder for 15 years to life.
The bar’s disciplinary committee then moves to disbar Southerlyn for deceit under Disciplinary Rule 1-102, and McCoy represents her. Aaron Solomon, a former defense attorney pressing the case against her, suggests she kept the hostage in the room so that Hobbs’s words would not be privileged, and he calls Lewin, a former ethics professor, who concedes that no exception exists but that she might break the rule to save a life.
Spoiler, the ending: The committee finds that Southerlyn violated the rule but recommends only a private reprimand, citing her dilemma and the unlikelihood of a repeat. Lewin returns her to the trial schedule.
Why it stands out
- The title is the disciplinary rule Southerlyn is charged with breaking, which bars lawyers from conduct involving dishonesty or misrepresentation.
- Lewin, a former legal ethics professor, is subpoenaed as an expert witness against her own assistant, with McCoy cross-examining his boss.
- Lewin points to a Denver prosecutor who was disciplined by the Colorado bar after a similar standoff.