The Wheel (Season 13, Episode 9)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 13, Episode 9
- 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
- Tzi Ma as Li Chen, Chris Sarandon as defense attorney Howard Pincham, Grant Chang as Akai Yuen, Ken Leung as Tommy Wong, Lianna Pai as Wendy Quan
- Director
- Richard Dobbs
- Writers
- Jill Goldsmith
Summary
The Investigation
“The Wheel” opens with the burning body of a young Asian woman in the penthouse hallway of a luxury building, just outside the door of Li Chen, China’s deputy consul general. Chen tells Briscoe and Green she must be a Falun Gong follower protesting by self-immolation, a practice he says the banned movement encourages. The detectives notice she wore only one shoe and an elastic bandage, and the doormen insist no stranger got past them.
A neighbor’s chauffeur, Tommy Wong, practices Falun Gong in the park, where a fellow follower names a missing regular: Huang “Helen” Quan, a recent immigrant with a sprained ankle. Her sister, Wendy, says their mother is held in a Chinese detention camp for her beliefs. The medical examiner finds Helen was strangled before she was set alight. Wong admits sneaking her in through the garage so she could plead with Chen, who had ignored her calls.
Lawyer Sally Xiao reveals that Helen sued Chen in federal court under the Alien Tort Claims Act over abuses in Tianjin, where he had been mayor, and he was served two weeks before the murder despite denying any knowledge of a suit. Chen claims he spent the evening at the consulate, and his driver, Akai Yuen, says he was with escorts, but one escort says Chen left his guests for hours. Chen is placed under surveillance.
The Trial
Branch, whose former firm, Pennington Cleese, represented China, fears diplomatic fallout, but McCoy insists on a grand jury. Yuen recants before it, and Chen is indicted anyway and arrested. Chen’s lawyer, Howard Pincham, Branch’s former right-hand man, invokes consular immunity and calls the lawsuit frivolous. Armed with Branch’s tip that Pincham toured China for the firm, McCoy threatens to call him as a witness about the camps and to seek the firm’s disqualification.
Pincham confronts Branch over the leak and offers to drop an ethics complaint if Chen is sent home for trial, but Branch refuses. Pincham then steers the prosecutors to receipts proving Chen spent the evening drinking at a hotel bar. Realizing that Yuen never knew where his boss really was, they turn to a garage attendant, who places Yuen in the building that night.
Spoiler, the ending: Yuen confesses that he went to Chen’s apartment to watch satellite TV, found Helen demanding to see Chen, and strangled her when she refused to drop the suit, fearing that Chen’s recall would force him back to China. With Sally Xiao representing him for free, he is expected to plead guilty to manslaughter and serve 8⅓ to 25 years in Attica. No trial is shown.
Why it stands out
- Chris Sarandon guest stars as Howard Pincham, a corporate litigator and Branch’s former right-hand man at his old firm.
- The motive hinges on a lawsuit brought in a U.S. federal court against a foreign official over alleged abuses in his own country.
- Branch’s past as outside counsel to the Chinese government leaves him facing an ethics threat from his old colleague.