Law & Order Season 15 Episode Guide
Plot summaries for the fifteenth season of Law & Order, which aired on NBC from September 2004 to May 2005, featuring Det. Joe Fontana, Det. Ed Green, Det. Nick Falco, Lt. Anita Van Buren, Executive ADA Jack McCoy, ADA Serena Southerlyn, ADA Alexandra Borgia and DA Arthur Branch.
- 1
Paradigm
When an Army reservist who served as a guard at Abu Ghraib is found smothered and posed like a crusader, the trail leads to the Iraqi-born sister of a former detainee, whose lawyer says she is a prisoner of war.
- 2
The Dead Wives Club
A passenger who dies when a ferry slams into a Manhattan dock turns out to have been pushed overboard, and suspicion falls on the ex-wife of the firefighter who left her to marry his late best friend’s widow.
- 3
The Brotherhood
A member of a white prison gang is executed on the night of his release from Sing Sing, and the corrections officer charged with killing him argues that he had to strike first to protect his family.
- 4
Coming Down Hard
Two students at the same university fall to their deaths within a week, and both turn out to have been paid subjects in a high-dose antidepressant trial whose sponsor kept its worst results hidden.
- 5
Gunplay
Two undercover gun detectives are executed during a buy, and the trail runs from the shooters to a website of undercover officers’ photos posted by a defense attorney whose stepson died in one of their earlier stings.
- 6
Cut
A best-selling thriller writer is found dead in a hotel room the day after cosmetic surgery, and the trail leads to her plastic surgeon, who prescribed a painkiller that proved lethal with her antidepressant.
- 7
Gov Love
The wife of Connecticut’s governor is stabbed at a Manhattan fundraiser, and the case exposes a developer’s favors, the governor’s secret affair with a man and a legal fight over same-sex marriage.
- 8
Cry Wolf
A radio shock jock who once staged attacks on himself for publicity is shot for real, and the hit traces back to a mob boss whose mistress he was secretly seeing.
- 9
All in the Family
A diamond dealer cooperating with federal prosecutors is gunned down on a crowded sidewalk, and the hit leads from Russian mobsters to his wife, who was trapped in a marriage she could not leave.
- 10
Enemy
A massacre at a Washington Heights heroin stash house that kills three prep school girls leads to an Afghan warlord who claims his work for the U.S. military shields him.
- 11
Fixed
Fifteen years after he was locked up for abusing his family and causing his young daughter’s death, Jacob Lowenstein is run down a month into his parole, and the evidence points to the prison therapist who knew him best.
- 12
Mammon
A wealthy venture capitalist is beaten to death in his renovated townhouse, and suspicion falls on his young wife and the contractor who installed the alarm system and shared her bed.
- 13
Ain't No Love
When a pioneering DJ is shot dead in his studio, his young protégé’s lyrics about a real killing make him the prime suspect, while Southerlyn’s doubts about the case put her at odds with McCoy and Branch.
- 14
Fluency
During a flu vaccine shortage, patients who believed they had been immunized start dying, and detectives follow a chain of black-market middlemen to a counterfeiter who filled the vials with salt water.
- 15
Obsession
A conservative TV host accused of sexual harassment is shot dead outside his book signing, and the woman who pulled the trigger claims his wife talked her into it.
- 16
The Sixth Man
A reclusive basketball fan is found with a broken neck in his rent-controlled apartment, and the trail leads to the visiting star he spent two seasons taunting from the stands and over the phone.
- 17
License to Kill
An SUV crashes into a Washington Heights restaurant at the end of a chase, and its dead driver proves to be a gunman who has just killed five hunters upstate, leaving McCoy to prosecute the motorist who pursued him.
- 18
Dining Out
A TV executive is strangled in a private park after a charity gala, and suspicion moves from the twins who run the charity to her husband and finally to the celebrity chef she was sleeping with.
- 19
Sects
A survivor of a sect that abused its children kills his former nanny and then shoots himself, and McCoy turns the case against the mother who founded the group.
- 20
Tombstone
A junior lawyer is killed with a deal trophy inside a powerful Manhattan firm, and the case against a newly minted partner is tangled up with a securities fraud probe and the shooting of Det. Ed Green.
- 21
Publish and Perish
An adult-film star turned memoirist is found shot in her Manhattan sublet, and Fontana and Nick Falco, his fill-in partner, follow the case from her enraged editor to a former police commissioner nominated for a top national security post.
- 22
Sport of Kings
A Panamanian jockey who can’t get rides is shot dead outside a downtown bar, and his curiosity about a gifted colt leads to the horse’s owner, a company chief who bought it with his employees’ retirement money.
- 23
In God We Trust
A revolver set off by the heat of an arson fire leads to a racially motivated murder from 1996, and the confessed killer, now a devout Christian, asks the court to dismiss the case in the interest of justice.
- 24
Locomotion
A rush-hour commuter train slams into an SUV parked on the tracks, killing 12, and the man who left it there says he meant to kill only himself, setting up an insanity defense he later throws out.