Patient Zero (Season 14, Episode 3)
Premise: A carjacking victim’s SUV holds a vial of SARS, and the trail leads to a celebrated virologist accused of infecting his former mistress during an outbreak that also strikes her young son.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 14, Episode 3
- 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
- Daniel Gerroll as Dr. Charles Blanchard, Khrystyne Haje as Elaine Blanchard, Helen Carey as defense attorney Charlotte Swan, Phoebe Jonas as Jeannine Wilson, Jack Gwaltney as Ian Hopkins
- Ripped from the headlines
- The plot reportedly draws on a 1994 real-life case in which a jilted doctor injected his lover with HIV.
- Director
- David Platt
- Writers
- Wendy Battles
Summary
The Investigation
“Patient Zero” begins with a carjacking murder on West 23rd Street, where a young woman is dragged from her blue Escalade and shot in the chest. A Bronx informant steers Briscoe and Green to a chop shop holding the SUV and a vial the mechanics refuse to touch. The owner names Lamont Tyler, who is identified by three witnesses, tied to the gun by ballistics and confesses. Tests on the vial, however, find coronavirus: SARS.
The victim, Anna Hopkins, was a lab technician for Dr. Charles Blanchard at Hudson University, whose lab holds a SARS culture from China but no record of sending any out. Blanchard notes that Hopkins was born in Saudi Arabia; her husband bristles, and she is on no watch list. Twelve people are soon isolated with SARS at St. Mark’s Hospital, and a friend says Blanchard told Hopkins to dispose of the vial. The first patient is science journalist Jeannine Wilson, whose four-year-old son, Tanner, is also sick. Her strain came from China, not Toronto, where she had just been, and she recalls that Blanchard, her lover of four years, gave her one of his usual B12 shots after her return. Blanchard is arrested for attempted murder.
The Trial
Defense attorney Charlotte Swan argues SARS is curable, offers an alibi from Blanchard’s wife, Elaine, and plans to point to Hopkins’s Saudi birth, which the judge bars as baseless. A coworker reveals that Wilson often visited the lab and left Tanner with Hopkins, contrary to her account, and Wilson admits a paternity test showed Blanchard is the boy’s father. Southerlyn tells Elaine, who shrugs it off. When Tanner dies, McCoy raises the charge to second-degree murder, and Swan rejects a plea.
An expert testifies that the vial and the patients carried the Hong Kong strain, a 92 percent genetic match, though the needle was never found. Wilson describes Blanchard’s anger when the affair ended, and Blanchard swears he was home with Elaine that night. Elaine backs him, then breaks down under McCoy’s cross and says she lied. On redirect, Swan has her name her husband’s many affairs and admit she is angry enough to lie to hurt him, and she returns to the alibi.
Spoiler, the ending: Blanchard rejects a deal, and Elaine tells the prosecutors that jurors more readily believe a wife lying to punish a cheating husband than one lying to save him. The jury acquits Blanchard of attempted murder and of second-degree murder.
Why it stands out
- Expert testimony separates the SARS strain behind the Toronto outbreak from the Hong Kong strain found in the vial and in Wilson and her son.
- The judge bars the defense from pointing to the victim’s Saudi birth to suggest terrorism, dismissing it as a racial ploy.
- Elaine Blanchard reverses her alibi twice on the stand, and the confusion she creates ends in acquittal on both counts.