Paradigm (Season 15, Episode 1)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 15, Episode 1
- Detectives
- Det. Joe Fontana (Dennis Farina), 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
- Ron Silver as defense attorney Bernie Adler, Sarita Choudhury as Nadira Harrington, Robert John Burke as Lt. Colonel Milton Danbury, Randall Newsome as Jeff Harrington, Michael Bloomberg as himself
- Ripped from the headlines
- The story is built on the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal: the victim is an Army reservist who guarded detainees at the prison, and the scandal is discussed by name throughout the episode.
- Director
- Matthew Penn
- Writers
- Story: Dick Wolf; Teleplay: Richard Sweren
Summary
The Investigation
“Paradigm” opens with a murder on an empty office floor in a Morris Street tower, where a barefoot young woman lies with a bloody cross drawn on her chest. Green is working alone until his new partner, Joe Fontana, arrives from Bronx Homicide. The M.E. says the victim was struck on the head and then smothered, and the blood on her clothes came from a pig. A “713” tattoo identifies Cpl. Lindsay Starr, an Army reservist whose military police unit came home from Iraq four months earlier. A letter offering free cruise tickets to returning troops lured her there.
Her safe-deposit box holds photos of abused detainees that resemble Abu Ghraib. Van Buren suspects the military, while Fontana recognizes a crusader’s burial pose. Her commander, Lt. Colonel Milton Danbury, admits the unit guarded prisoners there. An Iraqi shopkeeper’s story leads to Drexel Oil, in the same tower, and engineer Jeff Harrington, who won the release of his wife’s brother, Mohammed; Mohammed later died in a car bombing.
Nadira Harrington claims she was shopping on Atlantic Avenue, but a butcher there sold her pig’s blood that morning, and video shows her entering and leaving the tower. She answers questions with only her name and birth date and says she is a prisoner of war.
The Trial
Charged with second-degree murder as a hate crime, she is held without bail. Southerlyn would rather hand her to the military, but McCoy keeps the case. Defense attorney Bernie Adler argues that the Geneva Conventions shield a resistance fighter who kills an enemy soldier; the judge rules that Starr, an inactive reservist, could not have known she was at war. Adler rejects a deal, and Branch, bracing for jury nullification, holds a press conference at which Mayor Michael Bloomberg introduces him.
Danbury testifies that Starr helped prepare detainees for interrogation and defends humiliation as a way to save lives. Jeff Harrington, a hostile witness, puts Nadira in the building that day. Nadira testifies that her brother described sexual abuse by guards, that she found Starr online and lured her with the fake letter, and that she meant only to shame her with the blood until a struggle ended with a blow from a pipe. McCoy counters that she brought the blouse as a burial garment and smothered Starr after knocking her out. Adler asks jurors to imagine New York under Iraqi occupation; McCoy calls the killing revenge, not war.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury finds Nadira Harrington guilty of second-degree murder. Facing reporters, the prosecution calls the verdict a minor skirmish in the war on terror but a clear win for truth and justice.
Why it stands out
- Dennis Farina makes his first appearance as Det. Joe Fontana, who joins Green from Bronx Homicide.
- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg appears as himself, introducing Branch at a press conference on the case.
- Before trial, the defense argues the killing was an act of war under the Geneva Conventions, challenging the court’s right to hear the case at all.