Misbegotten (Season 18, Episode 3)
Premise: A package bomb leaves a pregnant security guard in a coma, and the bomber’s motive leads back to a scientist trying to detect a genetic marker for homosexuality before birth.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 18, Episode 3
- Detectives
- Det. Cyrus Lupo (Jeremy Sisto), Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Michael Cutter (Linus Roache), ADA Connie Rubirosa (Alana de la Garza), DA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston)
- Guest stars
- Kevin Rankin as Dean Emerson, Grant Shaud as Dr. Hoffman, Thomas Guiry as Ryan Emerson, Amy Landecker as defense attorney Parrish, Thomas G. Waites as David Drucker
- Ripped from the headlines
- The story draws on the idea of a “gay gene.”
- Director
- Michael Watkins
- Writers
- David Wilcox & Stephanie Sengupta
Summary
The Investigation
“Misbegotten” opens with a pipe bomb going off in the elevator of a medical office building as pregnant security guard Lori Emerson carries packages upstairs. She survives but suffers a massive stroke and lies in a coma with about a 5% chance of recovery, while her fetus remains stable. Her husband, Ryan, was at a bar when it happened, and Lori had moved in with her parents, Joan and David Drucker, amid money troubles.
The bomb was slipped in among lab specimens awaiting a courier in a doctor’s office; its label is unreadable, but it was apparently bound for Genatech, a lab upstairs. The detectives first check a couple who ended a pregnancy after Genatech wrongly reported Down syndrome, and Lupo is reprimanded for pushing them. Genatech’s Dr. Hoffman once drew a death threat at Hudson University over research claiming a genetic basis for homosexuality. A caller posing as psychiatrist Dr. Paul Bellamy asked the school about Hoffman, and Lupo quietly forwards Bellamy’s calendar to his own phone. It lists Ryan’s brother, Dean Emerson.
The call to the university came from Dean’s home, where his father’s nitroglycerin heart pills, a match for the bomb’s detonator, are missing. Dean is arrested for attempted murder. Because of Lupo’s stunt, a judge excludes the pills and the psychiatrist link but keeps the phone call. Rubirosa learns Lori was in Hoffman’s office that day; he had tested her amniotic fluid for the marker under the cover of a cancer study and asked her to get DNA from Dean, who is gay and refused.
The Trial
Cutter turns down a plea of 15 years to life. Hoffman testifies that he has applied for a patent on a prenatal screening test and that Lori’s fetus carries the marker. Called by the defense, Ryan recalls fighting boys who beat Dean in high school for being gay, but on cross he places Dean at a therapist in the bombed building, which lets Cutter revive the excluded evidence. Lori’s father then appears with a surprise alibi for Dean.
Cutter and Rubirosa learn Ryan has decided to end the pregnancy, which would preserve Lori’s slim chance of recovery, and suspect the abortion is the price of Drucker’s testimony. McCoy asks Judge Josiah Bell for a stay, but the judge finds no evidence of a deal and no standing to challenge Ryan’s medical authority. Cutter then tells Dean, with Ryan present, what the alibi is costing, and Dean confesses he sent the bomb to stop Hoffman.
Spoiler, the ending: Ryan delays the abortion by two days, and Cutter doubts it will change his mind. No formal plea or verdict is shown.
Why it stands out
- A judge throws out key evidence after Lupo forwards a psychiatrist’s appointment calendar from the doctor’s BlackBerry to his own phone.
- The defense reopens the door to the excluded evidence by calling the defendant’s brother, letting Cutter bring the psychiatrist’s office back in on cross-examination.
- McCoy personally seeks an emergency stay to halt an abortion he believes is tied to perjured alibi testimony.