Choice of Evils (Season 16, Episode 15)
Premise: A teenage runaway is found shot in an empty Manhattan warehouse, and DNA leads to his mother, the former wife of a serial killer, who says she killed her son to stop him from becoming his father.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 16, Episode 15
- Detectives
- Det. Joe Fontana (Dennis Farina), Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Alexandra Borgia (Annie Parisse), DA Arthur Branch (Fred Dalton Thompson)
- Guest stars
- Molly Price as Allison Ashburn, Penny Johnson Jerald as defense attorney Ms. Booker, Adam Grupper as John Ashburn, Lauren Hodges as Tina Keith, Carolyn McCormick as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet
- Director
- Michael Pressman
- Writers
- David Wilcox
Summary
The Investigation
“Choice of Evils” opens with a real estate agent discovering the body of a teenage boy shot twice in the chest in an empty warehouse, tucked into a sleeping bag about a week earlier. Rats have ruined his fingerprints, and a priest at a shelter knows him only as Danny, a runaway who picked fights and seemed to expect to die. His DNA nearly matches Walter Flint, a serial rapist and killer serving life, whose ex-wife, Allison, was pregnant when they divorced.
Allison, now married to John Ashburn and living in Clarkstown, says Danny ran away six months earlier after years of violence and a conduct disorder diagnosis. A squatter named Shawn, angry that Danny took his girlfriend, fires a gun during his arrest, but it is not the murder weapon. The girlfriend, a pregnant Tina Keith, says Danny’s mother brought them money and that she found Danny dead after a second trip to the Ashburn home.
A .38 reported stolen from a restaurant where John keeps the books turns up in the Ashburns’ laundry room with two spent shells. John is arrested but was at a movie with the children, and Allison confesses that she shot Danny because he was becoming like his father.
The Trial
Defense attorney Booker is expected to argue extreme emotional disturbance, and Dr. Olivet finds Allison consumed by guilt over Flint’s crimes. The prosecutors offer manslaughter with ten years, but Allison refuses and insists she was protecting Tina and the baby. The judge cautiously lets Booker argue that the killing was justified in defense of others.
A psychiatrist testifies that Danny’s form of conduct disorder often leads to violent crime, and Flint describes violence in his own family. Midway through the trial, ATM surveillance video shows Danny shooting a man named Philip Brown, and the judge admits it although Allison never knew of it. On cross, McCoy suggests she acted because John had threatened to leave with the children if Danny came home, and she admits John said so.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Allison of second-degree murder. Tina Keith, now in touch with Child Services, learns she is expecting a boy.
Why it stands out
- The defense claims justification, arguing that a mother killed her son to protect others from violence he had not yet committed.
- Mid-trial, surveillance video shows the victim had already committed an unsolved murder, and the judge lets the jury see it though his mother never knew.
- Allison rejects a manslaughter deal against her lawyer’s advice in order to argue that the killing was justified.