Gov Love (Season 15, Episode 7)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 15, Episode 7
- 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
- Zeljko Ivanek as Richard Kaplan, Robin Thomas as Connecticut Governor Michael Riordan, Jeremy Webb as Devin Bradley, Chris Sarandon as defense attorney Howard Pincham, Fran Lebowitz as Judge Janice Goldberg
- Director
- Michael Pressman
- Writers
- Richard Sweren & Ross Berger
Summary
The Investigation
“Gov Love” opens in Central Park, where two volunteers sneaking away from a Democratic fundraising lunch find Peggy Riordan, wife of Connecticut Governor Michael Riordan, stabbed once through the heart with a thin spike. A witness saw her argue with a tall woman on the way in, and the governor’s aide bristles at the mention of a reporter. The woman is Claudia Gaines, a TV reporter looking into state contracts steered to firms tied to developer Richard Kaplan, and she says she left within 15 minutes.
Kaplan arrived late with his publicist, Nicole Temple, after a detour to his Bridgeport construction site, where a guard’s scratch awl, the kind of tool that killed Mrs. Riordan, went missing that day. His foreman, Vincent Caparzo, reveals that Temple is an escort, and she admits Kaplan left her alone for 10 or 15 minutes at the party. Kaplan’s brother-in-law and accountant, Larry Levine, says Kaplan used photos of him with Temple to keep him from telling the state attorney general that Kaplan built the governor’s country house for free, with $840,000 in phantom payments on the books.
Levine adds that the governor gave a state job to Kaplan’s lover, Devin Bradley, an art history graduate now deputy commissioner of transportation. Bradley first calls the relationship strictly professional, then admits an affair with Riordan. Mrs. Riordan had caught them together, and Bradley says Kaplan, fearing she would go public and force the governor out, told him afterward that he had killed her at the party.
The Trial
Southerlyn reveals the affair in court while arguing for remand, and Kaplan gets $5 million bail. McCoy warns Riordan that stonewalling could make him a suspect, and the governor resigns. He testifies that he is gay, that his wife caught him with Bradley and that Kaplan feared losing his state business. Defense attorney Howard Pincham then reveals that Kaplan and Bradley were married in March by the mayor of New Paltz and claims spousal privilege to bar the confession.
The trial judge upholds the privilege, so McCoy, over Southerlyn’s objections, asks the Court of Appeals to void the New Paltz marriages. The court rules that the law never contemplated same-sex marriage, voids them over three dissents and urges the legislature to give gay couples equal rights. Back on the stand, Bradley refuses to repeat Kaplan’s words, protesting that McCoy has treated gay people as second-class citizens, and he is held in contempt.
Spoiler, the ending: Facing a mistrial, McCoy offers second-degree murder; the defense counters with first-degree manslaughter, and Kaplan takes 15 years to life once Bradley’s release is assured. Told he got everything he wanted, McCoy replies that it rarely works out that way.
Why it stands out
- The defense invokes spousal privilege for a same-sex couple wed in New Paltz, an evidentiary question with no direct precedent.
- McCoy persuades New York’s highest court to void the New Paltz marriages, yet still loses his star witness, who refuses to testify.
- Southerlyn opposes McCoy’s push to invalidate same-sex marriage, part of her character’s story before she leaves the series midway through Season 15.