Ain't No Love (Season 15, Episode 13)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 15, Episode 13
- 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
- Sean Nelson as Steven “Four Strike” Foreman, Jade Yorker as Anthony “Psycho” Harrison, Al Sapienza as Pete Andretti, David Chandler as defense attorney Melvin Silverman, Daryl Edwards as Shawn Foreman
- Director
- Paris Barclay
- Writers
- Richard Sweren & Lois Johnson
Summary
The Investigation
“Ain’t No Love” opens with the murder of hip-hop pioneer Ronald “RC Flex” Caldwell, shot in the chest in his recording studio on the night he was to receive a career award. The killer was buzzed in and used a .45 with a homemade silencer, an orange Delecta soda bottle that police keep secret. The medical examiner finds signs of clumsy CPR, so someone else was in the room and tried to save him.
Bodyguard Pete Andretti, a former officer, lies about guarding Caldwell that night; a moonlighting Queens cop, Leon Mooney, had the job and says Andretti had quit on the rapper. Andretti admits Caldwell was involved with his young wife, Cece, but is released.
A CD in the studio console holds an unauthorized street remix by Caldwell’s protégé, Queens rapper Steven “Four Strike” Foreman, whose label had advanced him $90,000. Foreman claims Caldwell approved the remix weeks ago, though the single was finished only the day before. One track boasts of a robbery-murder committed with the same kind of soda-bottle silencer, matching the unsolved 2003 shooting of dealer Santo Villanueva in Queens, which police suspected was the work of Foreman’s friend Anthony “Psycho” Harrison. A search finds boxes of bootleg CDs and boots with gunpowder and melted plastic in the treads, and Foreman is arrested.
The Trial
Foreman stays silent and makes $2 million bail. Southerlyn doubts a talented teenager with no record killed his mentor and suspects Harrison. A chat-room post on the record label’s fan site says Psycho boasted of the shooting and mentions the soda bottle, but once McCoy defeats the label’s bid to quash his subpoena, the poster turns out to live in Ukraine. Southerlyn approaches Foreman without his lawyer; Branch orders the case tried.
Fontana testifies about the Villanueva lyrics, and McCoy breaks the father’s alibi with a record of a cable outage. Defense attorney Melvin Silverman then adds Harrison as a witness who will swear he was the shooter. Bank records show a $500,000 cash withdrawal, and Foreman admits paying Harrison; he says Harrison killed Caldwell for talking him out of funding a drug deal, that he himself buzzed Harrison in and tried CPR, and that the Queens lyric was invented for credibility. The judge leaves McCoy a choice between dismissal and the bought confession, and Harrison testifies.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury acquits Foreman of second-degree murder. McCoy has him arrested for witness tampering and held as a material witness against Harrison, who is charged with Villanueva’s murder in Queens, leaving Caldwell’s killing without a conviction. Branch then fires Southerlyn, telling her that her passion has no place in a prosecutor’s office. She asks if it is because she is a lesbian, and he says no.
Why it stands out
- The episode is Elisabeth Röhm’s final appearance as ADA Serena Southerlyn, who comes out as a lesbian in the closing scene.
- In 2005 the episode placed 25th on TV Land’s list of the “Top 100 Most Unexpected Moments in TV History.”
- The defendant pays a friend $500,000 to confess to the murder on the stand, and the prosecution cannot charge the friend afterward without him claiming the confession was a lie.