Strike (Season 18, Episode 16)
Premise: A Legal Aid paralegal is run down on a picket line, the suspect is a man freed by DNA after nine years in prison, and the strike leaves Rubirosa defending him against her own office.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 18, Episode 16
- Detectives
- Det. Cyrus Lupo (Jeremy Sisto), Det. Kevin Bernard (Anthony Anderson)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Michael Cutter (Linus Roache), ADA Connie Rubirosa (Alana de la Garza), DA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston)
- Guest stars
- Brad William Henke as Ted Sanderson, Justin Hagan as Frank Dresner, Kelly Demaret as Lila Dresner, Jeff Talbott as Judge Herbert Warren, Happy Anderson as Jim Matthews
- Director
- Marisol Torres
- Writers
- William N. Fordes & David Slack
Summary
The Investigation
“Strike” opens during a City Legal Aid strike, when paralegal Frank Dresner, picketing alone at a courthouse gate, is killed by a vehicle that never braked. A process server who clashed with the picketers is ruled out when the medical examiner finds Dresner was hit by a truck or SUV and the lab finds golf bunker sand in his wounds. A photo Dresner sent his wife, Lila, and security video point to a Suffolk County Parks golf truck.
One of the county’s drivers, greensman Ted Sanderson, served nine years for murdering his wife, Julie, before DNA cleared him last year. His truck has a hammered-out dent, and when Bernard pretends to find a picketers’ nail in its tire, Sanderson admits driving into Manhattan. A .38 in his toolbox leads detectives to suspect he planned a courthouse attack, but the judge who sentenced him, now backing his pardon, warns against harassment. The DNA that freed Sanderson carried a cystic fibrosis marker; Lila describes Dresner’s breathing problems, he and Julie used the same pool, and his DNA matches. With a revenge motive established, Sanderson is charged with murder.
The Trial
Because Legal Aid is on strike, the arraignment judge has Rubirosa stand in for Sanderson, and he then wins a ruling that she must stay on as his lawyer. She gets his statement suppressed, arguing the nail trick was akin to planting evidence, but after she obtains bank footage by flashing her prosecutor’s badge, the judge hands it to Cutter. It shows Sanderson watching Dresner use an inhaler days before the killing, and Sanderson privately admits to her that he ran Dresner down and planted a dead dog to explain his truck’s damage.
Cutter offers a plea to vehicular homicide with a sentence of 8 1/3 to 25 years. Rubirosa provokes Bernard on the stand into declaring that Sanderson knew Dresner was ill, then moves to exclude the tape. When Sanderson mentions a dive site off Belize, she suspects he and Dresner were diving partners. McCoy tells her to follow the law. The tape stays in, and Cutter renews his offer.
Spoiler, the ending: Rubirosa tells Sanderson, under privilege, her theory that he had Dresner kill Julie and then silenced him before a genetic test could expose them, but promises a full defense if he chooses trial. Sanderson takes the plea. McCoy asks whether her secret shaped her advice, and she says she hopes not.
Why it stands out
- Rubirosa spends much of the episode as defense counsel, appointed because the Legal Aid strike has left the defendant without a lawyer.
- Deception backfires on both sides: a detective’s fake evidence gets a statement suppressed, and Rubirosa’s use of her prosecutor’s badge costs her client privilege over a key tape.
- McCoy threatens to send prosecutors who mock Rubirosa to Traffic Court, defending her duty to represent her client zealously.