Compassion (Season 14, Episode 9)
Premise: A psychic grief counselor dies of cyanide at lunch, and the trail leads to a celebrated pediatric oncologist he once robbed under another name, leaving McCoy to decide whether she wanted revenge or has lost touch with reality.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 14, 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
- Ann Dowd as Dr. Beth Allison, Tim Gallin as Gideon Blake, Bernadette Quigley as Mrs. Padgett, Jack Koenig as defense attorney Swift, J. K. Simmons as Dr. Emil Skoda
- Director
- Constantine Makris
- Writers
- Roz Weinman
Summary
The Investigation
“Compassion” opens with the cyanide poisoning of Gideon Blake, who collapses at a restaurant after eating an oyster. An assistant M.E. notices the smell of bitter almonds, and the poison turns up in a bottle of hot sauce Blake carried with him. His lunch date, pediatric oncologist and best-selling author Dr. Beth Allison, explains that Blake ran seminars and séances for the grieving and that she was studying his work. Former clients who paid him thousands say his claimed past was invented.
Blake leaves almost no paper trail, but his fingerprints identify him as Lee Wayne Mapes, a real estate swindler wanted by federal authorities for a scheme that preyed on doctors. Allison and her estranged husband, Dr. Matthew Allison, lost $500,000 on an Arizona shopping center in one of his deals, though she insists she never knew Blake and Mapes were the same man. A researcher at her hospital tells the detectives that a nearby lab stocks cyanide and is open to anyone on the floor. In Allison’s trash the detectives find a squirrel killed by potassium cyanide, and her phone records show calls to Blake and the restaurant on the day he died. She is charged with second-degree murder.
The Trial
Defense attorney Swift gets the squirrel suppressed on the ground that the warrant covered Allison’s home, not her garbage. Her husband mentions an angry caller, Mrs. Padgett, who says she recognized Blake as Mapes and warned Allison two days before the murder, and that Allison asked her to hold off on going to the police. When McCoy offers first-degree manslaughter, Allison calmly says Blake has thanked her, and the defense turns to insanity.
Dr. Emil Skoda finds Allison sane and suspects a performance, though under cross-examination he concedes her belief that she sees the dead could affect her behavior. Mrs. Padgett, whose husband took his own life after Mapes ruined them, testifies that Mapes deserved to die. A defense psychiatrist argues that years of watching children die left Allison needing to believe in an afterlife. On the stand, Allison admits the poisoning, saying she sent Blake somewhere peaceful to spare him prison. Questioned by McCoy about her lost savings, she breaks down, saying the children died because she failed them and that Blake is now with them.
Spoiler, the ending: In a recess lasting minutes, McCoy and Swift agree that Allison will be confined to a private psychiatric hospital for ten years or until three doctors chosen by the DA’s office find she is no danger. McCoy is told afterward that what he has shown is compassion.
Why it stands out
- Key physical evidence, a squirrel killed by the same cyanide, is suppressed because the warrant covered the defendant’s home but not her trash.
- J. K. Simmons appears as forensic psychiatrist Dr. Emil Skoda, who rates the defendant sane yet concedes her visions could shape her behavior.
- McCoy settles the case in the middle of the trial, during a brief recess, after the defendant’s breakdown on the stand.