Genius (Season 13, Episode 17)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 13, Episode 17
- 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
- Saul Rubinek as Professor Ira Simpkis, David Wike as Clay Warner, Stanley Anderson as Nelson Lambert, Sonia Braga as Helen, J. K. Simmons as Dr. Emil Skoda
- Ripped from the headlines
- The episode is based on the case of Jack Henry Abbott, a prisoner-author freed in 1981 partly through Norman Mailer’s lobbying, who killed a New York waiter within weeks of his parole.
- Director
- Jace Alexander
- Writers
- William N. Fordes
Summary
The Investigation
“Genius” begins with a cabbie’s murder: a stabbing victim is found under a parked cab, and the knife reached his aorta at about 3 a.m. Under the car are a new copy of Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell and a $40 Cuban cigar. The cab’s licensed driver admits lending it on Wednesday nights to John Chertoff, a friend from Alcoholics Anonymous. Chertoff’s fingerprints belong to Bobby Lee Redburn, a Klansman tried for a Mississippi church fire that killed a preacher’s two children; after a hung jury, he fled when federal agents found him downloading child pornography.
A bookstore says novelist Nelson Lambert bought the Rimbaud. Lambert, who once stabbed his wife, admits smoking the same kind of cigar that night but says he was drunk at Helen’s Tavern. Green drinks with him for hours and hears a detailed lecture on knife killing, yet DNA from his mezcal bottle does not match the cigar. Beck instead ties a print on the book to Clay Warner, a writing teacher whose prison novel Lambert championed. Warner lies about the book, his novel explains exactly where a blade should enter the chest, and a Sing Sing warden links him to an inmate’s fatal stabbing. With his DNA on the cigar and Redburn’s cash missing, Warner is arrested.
The Trial
Warner is charged with felony murder. His lawyer, Ira Simpkis, once McCoy’s law professor, claims police violated the First Amendment by asking what customers bought at the bookstore, but the judge rules Warner lacks standing because Lambert bought the book. With his office mate’s consent, investigators find cash bearing Redburn’s prints hidden behind a Faulkner biography; a knife is sent for blood tests. As Simpkis attacks that search, Warner cuts in and offers to plead guilty on one condition: a death sentence.
Simpkis moves to vacate the agreed sentence, arguing that a man who wants to die cannot bargain competently. Skoda reports no voices, no irresistible impulse and no remorse. Simpkis presses McCoy on whether a Klansman’s life equals a gifted writer’s. At the hearing, Lambert testifies that genius deserves forgiveness and that an artist who abandons his art cannot be rational. Warner calmly describes dragging the driver from the cab and stabbing him after being told to put out his cigar, admits killing an inmate in prison, and says living or dying makes no difference to him. McCoy tells Branch that if Warner dies, it will be because McCoy wanted it; Branch answers that the law, not McCoy, decides.
Spoiler, the ending: The judge finds that the plea was reached in good faith without coercion and that no mental disorder or defect has been proved, and orders Warner executed under the terms of the plea agreement.
Why it stands out
- Defense lawyer Ira Simpkis taught McCoy first-year criminal law and needles him about the grade he earned.
- The defendant will plead guilty only if he is sentenced to death, so his own lawyer fights to show that wanting to die makes him incompetent.
- A First Amendment challenge to police use of bookstore sales records fails because the defendant never bought the book himself.