Law & Order Season 13 Episode Guide
Plot summaries for the thirteenth season of Law & Order, which aired on NBC from October 2002 to May 2003, featuring Det. Lennie Briscoe, Det. Ed Green, Lt. Anita Van Buren, Executive ADA Jack McCoy, ADA Serena Southerlyn and DA Arthur Branch.
- 1
American Jihad
When two professors are gunned down at home, a taped telemarketing call points detectives to a 19-year-old convert to Islam, who fires his lawyer, then takes over his own defense and turns the courtroom into a platform.
- 2
Shangri-La
A new teacher is found stabbed in a high school closet, and the student caught on the security tape, who is sleeping with her drama teacher, turns out to be an adult who has spent years passing as a teenager.
- 3
True Crime
The killing of a troubled rock singer draws in a retired NYPD detective writing a book about her husband’s fatal fall, and the gun he takes from a suspect’s apartment nearly sinks the prosecution.
- 4
Tragedy on Rye
A struggling actress is found shot in her soundproofed apartment over a deli, and a tourist video of three men hauling away her TV becomes the centerpiece of a capital murder case that Branch insists on pursuing.
- 5
The Ring
Remains dumped in a Hell’s Kitchen lot belong to a young woman everyone believed died in the September 11 attacks, and a $40,000 ring ties her to a married man from a powerful political family.
- 6
Hitman
A Manhattan contractor is shot in what looks like a professional hit, and a trail of money and phone calls leads from his unfaithful wife and her lover to a hit man already in federal custody.
- 7
Open Season
A defense attorney is shot after winning a controversial acquittal, and the case against a white supremacist leaves his new lawyer, Danielle Melnick, accused of helping him arrange another killing.
- 8
Asterisk
A limousine driver is found dead in a park, and the star ballplayer charged with his murder claims steroids drove him to it while the real reason for the killing stays hidden from the jury.
- 9
The Wheel
A young woman found burning outside a Chinese diplomat’s apartment looks like a Falun Gong protester, but her lawsuit against him suggests murder and pulls Branch’s old law firm into the case.
- 10
Mother's Day
A prep-school girl’s hit-and-run death leads to the driver, a young man stabbed to death by his own mother, whose niece defends her by arguing she acted to protect others.
- 11
Chosen
The killing of a bookie who served wealthy Manhattan gamblers leads to his partner, whose lawyer turns a murder trial into a referendum on support for Israel.
- 12
Under God
The shooting of a dealer blamed for a boy’s overdose points to the grieving father, until the family’s parish priest confesses and claims the killing was God’s will.
- 13
Absentia
When the wounded eyewitness to a jewelry store killing skips the trial, the detectives learn he is a fugitive celebrity convicted in absentia of murdering his girlfriend two decades earlier.
- 14
Star Crossed
The beating death of a luxury car manager leads to a dishwasher with limited intellect and the fashion student he steals for, and McCoy suspects the confession he accepted was a lie.
- 15
Bitch
A charming stockbroker is killed in his home, and the case leads from his photographer girlfriend to her mother, a cosmetics tycoon and friend of DA Arthur Branch.
- 16
Suicide Box
When an 18-year-old confesses to shooting a police officer outside a diner, his media-savvy lawyer turns the case into an attack on the police who closed his older brother’s killing as a suicide eight years earlier.
- 17
Genius
The stabbing of a moonlighting cab driver who turns out to be a fugitive Klansman leads to a celebrated novelist’s protégé, an ex-convict writer who then offers to plead guilty only if the state puts him to death.
- 18
Maritime
A young real estate broker is found shot and floating in the East River, and the trail leads to a retired star quarterback’s abandoned yacht, the blood of three people and the quarterback’s drug-addicted older brother.
- 19
Seer
A graphic designer is beaten to death in a SoHo alley after a women-run sex party, and her fixated neighbor, who leads police to the weapon, insists he only saw the murder in a psychic vision.
- 20
Kid Pro Quo
The admissions director of an elite Manhattan private school is beaten to death with her own cane, and her fight for a rejected scholarship applicant exposes a chain of favors that bought a kindergarten seat for a pornographer’s son.
- 21
House Calls
A Russian immigrant model who supports her family dies in a store dressing room, and the trail leads to a self-styled “Doctor to the Stars” who sees patients in a restaurant and pays house calls.
- 22
Sheltered
A sniper terrorizes Lower Manhattan with daylight shootings from the rooftops, and the hunt leads to an ex-Marine marksman and the teenage boy he has raised as his son.
- 23
Couples
In a single day Briscoe and Green catch three murders and a kidnapping, led by the shooting of a woman who proves to be the wife a paroled man was convicted of killing ten years earlier.
- 24
Smoke
A popular comedian’s adopted baby falls to his death from a burning hotel suite, and the investigation uncovers a child sex abuse case the star paid to keep quiet.