Driven (Season 18, Episode 5)
Premise: A fight over a basketball ends with two children shot dead near an Upper West Side playground, and both a Black father and a white mother face a jury for the deaths.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 18, Episode 5
- Detectives
- Det. Cyrus Lupo (Jeremy Sisto), Det. Ed Green (Jesse L. Martin), Lt. Anita Van Buren (S. Epatha Merkerson)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Michael Cutter (Linus Roache), ADA Connie Rubirosa (Alana de la Garza), DA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston)
- Guest stars
- Ally Walker as Gretchen Steel, Kevin Carroll as Ray Manning, Tristan Wilds as Will Manning, Jeremy Allen White as Andy Steel, Terry Kinney as defense attorney Clifford Chester
- Director
- Alan Taylor
- Writers
- Richard Sweren & Gina Gionfriddo
Summary
The Investigation
“Driven” begins with a double shooting near a playground on 105th Street: a white teenager is hit twice, and a bullet that passes through him kills Tanya Anderson, a girl of about nine or ten. Chlorine in the boy’s hair and paint flecks on his shoes lead to David Kendall, who had been visiting brothers Andy and Josh Steel, whose family is renovating a brownstone nearby. Their mother, Gretchen, says the boys spent the evening at home.
A local dealer saw David and the Steels near the court earlier, after players there took their ball. The brothers admit four young Black men kept David’s basketball and threatened them, and that David went back alone to retrieve it. Neighbors will not talk, and both bullets came from the same .25 pistol. Community leader Jonas Durning offers to bring witnesses forward if St. Rita’s church is spared from a condo sale, and Van Buren gets McCoy to lobby the Landmarks Commission.
A witness then names Will Manning, 17, who lives across from the court. In his home the detectives find David’s ball and a Raven Arms .25, and ballistics matches both bullets to it. Will’s father, Ray Manning, says three white boys with bats were chasing his son and admits he fired to protect him.
The Trial
Ray’s lawyer, Clifford Chester, stages daily press events. Before the grand jury, Will testifies that David swung a metal bat at him and that the other boys ran toward Central Park, away from their home. A fresh dent in a bench supports him, and Andy’s soccer coach says Gretchen urged him to play rough. Bats found in the Steel family car lead to her arrest. The prosecutors decide to try Ray for murder and Gretchen for manslaughter together, and the judge refuses to separate the cases.
Treated as a hostile witness, Andy testifies that his mother encouraged the trip and suggested the bats. On cross, Cutter presses Ray about his looming eviction and the white newcomers driving up rents, and confronts Gretchen with complaints she filed against her neighbors. Both defendants reject plea offers, and in summation Cutter blames the parents rather than the boys.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury acquits Ray of murder in David’s death but convicts him of second-degree murder for Tanya’s, and acquits Gretchen of manslaughter for David while convicting her for Tanya. The jurors ask that both receive the same sentence.
Why it stands out
- The prosecution tries a Black father for murder and a white mother for manslaughter before a single jury, arguing that both caused the same two deaths.
- McCoy invokes his old boss Adam Schiff when deciding whether to pull strings at City Hall to save a neighborhood church.
- Jeremy Allen White plays Andy Steel, one of three different roles he has had in the Law & Order franchise, after Season 17’s “Melting Pot” and before SVU’s “Torch.”