Birthright (Season 16, Episode 6)
Premise: A 16-year-old murder suspect dies in a holding cell, and her autopsy points to a free-clinic nurse who has been quietly sterilizing young women she considers unfit to raise children.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 16, Episode 6
- 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
- Stephanie Roth Haberle as Gloria Rhodes, Richard Brooks as defense attorney Paul Robinette, Myra Lucretia Taylor as Lillie Sands, Karen Olivo as Isabella Perez, Adepero Oduye as Traci Sands
- Director
- Constantine Makris
- Writers
- David Slack
Summary
The Investigation
“Birthright” starts as a murder case: Sam Register, a 68-year-old donut-cart vendor who scolded rowdy teens and reported them to police, is found stabbed nine times. A shopkeeper saw a Black girl in a bloody shirt run past, and the trail leads to Lillie Sands and her granddaughter Traci, 16. Child Services had removed Traci’s baby, Kesha, two weeks earlier after Register told them he saw Traci scald the child. Fontana and Green find Traci at her boyfriend Paz’s apartment, where Register’s wallet turns up, and the blood on her clothes is his. She denies the stabbing and asks for a lawyer.
Traci complains of feeling sick in her cell and is dead by morning. The M.E. finds a sickle syndrome disorder, uterine scarring and an IUD loaded with benecrine, an anti-malarial used overseas to sterilize women without surgery; combined with her condition, it caused fatal anemia. Traci’s family relies on the Operation Remedy free clinic, where nurse practitioner Gloria Rhodes claims she last treated Traci six months ago. The device traces to the clinic’s sponsor, the Center for Population and Hygiene, through a lot used in Cambodia during a mission Rhodes joined. A prescription Rhodes wrote for Traci ten days before her death exposes the lie, and Rhodes is arrested even though the right criminal charge is unclear.
The Trial
Paul Robinette, once an ADA himself, defends Rhodes on second-degree manslaughter. Clinic aide Savannah Watson tells Borgia that Rhodes did the same procedure on five girls with drug or arrest records, and exams confirm that Isabella Perez, now sober and engaged, was sterilized without knowing it. Branch raises the charge to depraved-indifference murder, though McCoy warns that some jurors may sympathize with eugenics and points to the 1927 Buck v. Bell ruling.
Dr. Robert Horton testifies that Rhodes did about 200 benecrine procedures in Cambodia but admits none of those patients had sickle syndrome. Perez says Rhodes asked her about sickle cell first, then lashes out at Rhodes during a hostile cross-examination. Rhodes claims Traci begged to be sterilized and denied any illness. Borgia learns that Lillie Sands visited the clinic shortly before the procedure; with immunity, Lillie admits she asked Rhodes to make Traci infertile without her knowledge and warned her about the sickle syndrome. Over Robinette’s objection, the judge lets the jury consider manslaughter too.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury acquits Rhodes of murder but convicts her of second-degree manslaughter. The DA’s office files charges over the other young women and ties Rhodes to at least 20 more forced sterilizations. Robinette tells McCoy he took the case because many people privately believe Rhodes did the right thing.
Why it stands out
- Richard Brooks returns as Paul Robinette, Ben Stone’s ADA from 1990 to 1993, in one of his three later appearances as a defense attorney.
- The prosecutors’ debate over eugenics reaches back to Buck v. Bell, the 1927 Supreme Court decision that upheld the sterilization of Carrie Buck.
- The case turns on the victim’s own grandmother, who receives immunity and admits she asked the nurse to sterilize the girl.