Under God (Season 13, Episode 12)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 13, Episode 12
- 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 Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson)
- Guest stars
- Denis O'Hare as Father Richard Hogan, Bruce MacVittie as Bill Parker, Peter Frechette as Jim Wheeler, Dick Latessa as Bishop Durning, Carolyn McCormick as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet
- Director
- Gloria Muzio
- Writers
- Marc Guggenheim & Noah Baylin
Summary
The Investigation
“Under God” opens with a drug dealer’s murder: Scott Giddins is found shot near the Williamsburg Bridge underpass. Giddins had five narcotics arrests but never served time. In his apartment the detectives find Gina, a young woman who has overdosed, and pills of ya ba, a Thai stimulant. She recalls a man with a red mark on his face demanding money.
That man, Juan of the Latin Playboys gang, says Giddins paid his rent for dealing on gang turf and points to a bus driver named Parker, who once chased the dealer with a lead pipe after his son’s overdose. Bill Parker, whose wife Linda is pregnant, says he was at a Neighborhood Watch meeting at St. Weston’s; Father Richard Hogan confirms it ended around 11, and another member says he walked Parker home. When Briscoe talks with Parker over drinks, Green warns that a confession in a bar would never hold up.
Teenagers saw Parker escorting a priest out of his building around midnight, and Hogan cites the confidentiality of his talks with parishioners. A .44 has gone missing from a bus company’s locker of seized weapons, and the detectives find a .44 behind new drywall in the Parkers’ future nursery. Parker is arrested. Then Hogan confesses: Parker gave him the gun to keep from using it, and a week later Hogan shot Giddins himself.
The Trial
Suspecting a ploy to create reasonable doubt, McCoy charges the priest instead. Linda Parker tells Southerlyn that Hogan acted so her husband would not have to, and Hogan’s Neighborhood Watch jacket tests positive for gunshot residue. Parker goes free. Hogan, represented by Jim Wheeler, rejects ten years, says a killing God wills is no crime and gives notice of a justification defense. Dr. Elizabeth Olivet finds him competent.
Parker testifies that Hogan arrived with blood on his fingers and said God wanted Giddins off the streets. Bishop Durning says those who claim divine orders to kill are usually ill, ambitious or mistaken, and McCoy gets him to agree God would be precise about such a command. Hogan cites Exodus on the stand, and McCoy asks why God’s wishes match his own and accuses him of failing the Parkers as their pastor.
Spoiler, the ending: Before the next session Parker insists he was the shooter. McCoy says a jury can decide and offers Hogan eight and a third to 25 years, and Hogan accepts over Wheeler’s objection to spare Parker. McCoy then tells Southerlyn about Tommy Suiter, an older neighborhood boy who refused a deathbed recantation in a VA hospital in 1968.
Why it stands out
- Denis O’Hare guest stars as Father Richard Hogan, a priest who offers divine guidance as a legal justification for murder.
- Dr. Elizabeth Olivet finds Hogan fit for trial, arguing that a belief gained through prayer cannot by itself be called a delusion.
- The episode never settles who fired the gun: the priest pleads guilty even as the father claims the killing as his own.