Star Crossed (Season 13, Episode 14)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 13, Episode 14
- 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
- Vanessa Ferlito as Tina Montoya, Chandler Parker as Robbie Delgado, Peter Gerety as defense attorney Dean Connors, David Roya as Pablo Montoya, Carolyn McCormick as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Richard Sweren
Summary
The Investigation
“Star Crossed” opens on Lenox Avenue in Harlem, where Hal Garber, manager of a Manhattan Jaguar showroom, is found dead of a head wound with his wallet emptied. He had left work with a customer test-driving a silver XJR, but the license that customer showed was stolen from Roscoe Martinez months earlier. The car turns up ticketed in Murray Hill with blood of Garber’s type on the passenger seat and prints that match an armed robbery at Bartholomew’s, a Second Avenue bar.
A regular at the bar had been chatting up a woman who slipped out just before the gunman appeared, and Briscoe and Green trace her to fashion student Tina Montoya, who prizes expensive things. The same prints are found at an art gallery stickup in which a David Bierk painting was taken. Tina’s former boyfriend recalls her carrying a $20,000 designer handbag, and the store that sells them links a bag lost in transit to a courier who quit, Robbie Delgado. His apartment holds the painting and a Jaguar key, and he is arrested at the restaurant where he washes dishes. Tina visits him and urges him to stay quiet.
The Trial
Robbie is charged with first-degree murder and three robberies. His lawyer, Dean Connors, offers pleas to the robberies alone and says Robbie is slow; Dr. Elizabeth Olivet puts his IQ in the low 80s and suspects he steals to please Tina, a friend since grade school. A classmate says Tina claims a wealthy father and was dropped at a school fashion show in a silver Jaguar, so she is arrested for conspiracy. Before McCoy can turn her, Connors offers a plea to murder two and the robberies on condition that Tina goes uncharged, and Robbie allocutes to clubbing Garber with his gun.
The medical examiner’s findings suggest the fatal blow came from the back seat. No gun is found behind the diner, so the detectives search the upscale Ninth Avenue restaurant Tina says her father owns; in fact he mops its kitchen. He calls her trash and indicates she brought Robbie there in the fancy car that night. Olivet believes Tina could kill, but Branch warns that McCoy cannot use Robbie’s confession and then accuse someone else. Connors’s offhand remark about Robbie’s scrambled brain echoes Tina’s nickname for him.
Spoiler, the ending: Confronted with a conspiracy charge of his own, Connors listens as Robbie says his lawyer told him to claim he acted alone, and Connors reflects on 30 years of bargaining. Robbie’s new legal aid attorney reopens his deal, with eight and a third to 25 years seen as fitting, while Tina chooses to stand trial; no verdict is shown.
Why it stands out
- Defense lawyer Dean Connors, known around the DA’s office for preferring deals to trials, ends up charged with conspiracy himself.
- Dr. Elizabeth Olivet assesses both suspects, measuring Robbie’s intellect and connecting Tina’s craving for luxury to her father’s contempt.
- Branch reminds McCoy that once the state has accepted a sworn confession, it cannot easily prosecute a different killer for the same crime.