Suicide Box (Season 13, Episode 16)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 13, Episode 16
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin), Lt. Anita Van Buren (S. Epatha Merkerson)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Serena Southerlyn (Elisabeth Röhm), DA Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson)
- Guest stars
- Gregory Hines as defense attorney Carl Halpert, Chad C. Tucker as Stevie Thomas, Oni Faida Lampley as Janet Thomas, Lisa Eichhorn as retired M.E. Gail Berardi, Claire Lautier as Officer Alice Cushman
- Director
- Matthew Penn
- Writers
- Aaron Zelman
Summary
The Investigation
“Suicide Box” opens with a police shooting outside the Market Diner, where Officer Alice Cushman of the 31st Precinct is hit in the shoulder by shots from a passing blue car. Briscoe and Green look at a fellow officer who had a brief affair with her and at her husband, Don, but a BMW clipped near the scene points instead to a car owned by nurse Janet Thomas, who says it was stolen and claims her son is dead.
Her co-workers mention another son, Stevie, who just turned 18. Alone with Green, Stevie admits firing at Cushman because police ignored the killing of his older brother, Eric. His lawyer, Carl Halpert, arrives after the confession and blames the police who brushed off Eric’s death. Eric’s 1994 death was closed as a suicide; most of the file is lost, the gun was melted down, and the lead detective has died. A prisoner serving three life terms, Jason Hendri, claims he shot Eric.
Halpert says police used the medical examiner’s suicide checkbox to dodge an investigation and demands that Stevie serve no time. To get the autopsy records, Southerlyn charges former medical examiner Gail Berardi with keeping government property, and the files are turned over. Rodgers finds them incomplete and needs the skull. Van Buren persuades Janet Thomas to allow an exhumation, but Eric’s body is gone: the funeral home’s owner was convicted of selling corpses to foreign medical schools.
The Trial
McCoy tells the jury simply that Stevie fired three times at Cushman from his mother’s car. Halpert passes on an opening, then gets Green to admit that Briscoe was out of the room for the confession and that Green joked about toaster ovens; the .38 was wiped clean. Once the People rest, Halpert argues the rules never say when a defense opening must come, and the judge lets him give one, telling jurors the police made Eric’s murder, and then his body, disappear.
Hendri testifies that he shot Eric in the back of the head, and Janet Thomas recalls the detective suddenly calling her son a suicide. Berardi, a defense witness, stands by the checked box, and under McCoy’s questioning says her notes rule out a shot from behind. Rodgers suspects Berardi glossed over the bone evidence, and when confronted, Berardi admits she was swamped with cases and does not really know. Halpert, planning to question her again, refuses a deal.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury finds Stevie Thomas not guilty of first-degree attempted murder; no other verdicts are shown. Afterward Van Buren says she now sees three people in the mirror, a cop, a Black woman and a mother, and the episode closes on the reminder that Eric Thomas sees nothing.
Why it stands out
- Gregory Hines guest-stars as defense attorney Carl Halpert, who builds his case around how police handled the death of his client’s older brother.
- Halpert waives his opening statement and then delivers it after the prosecution rests, arguing that the court rules set no deadline for it.
- Southerlyn charges a former medical examiner with keeping government property to force her to surrender old autopsy files.