Falling (Season 19, Episode 4)
Premise: A crane collapse that kills a passerby exposes a bribed inspector, then leads to the near drowning of the dead man’s wife and a fight over a controversial procedure to keep a disabled girl small.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 19, Episode 4
- 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
- Geraldine Hughes as Sandra Talbot, Michael Kelly as Gary Talbot, Frank Converse as Wayne Hardy, William Hill as Eddie O’Connor, Geoffrey Nauffts as defense attorney Goodwin
- Director
- Michael Watkins
- Writers
- Stephanie Sengupta & Keith Eisner
Summary
The Investigation
“Falling” starts with a crane collapse at a luxury condominium site that kills Carlos Lazaro, a laborer who was walking past. Developer Wayne Hardy calls his projects safe, but contractor Carl Nolan used a smaller crane than the bid specified, and logs show it regularly hoisting far more than its six-ton limit while crews worked through the night. City inspector Eddie O’Connor, whose family is renting a $15,000-a-month Hamptons house, admits taking bribes to approve the changes and names Nolan, the night foreman and Hardy.
Cash missing from the site’s petty-cash safe matches payments to a Queens hospital where Lazaro’s wife, Amelia, has lain in a coma for four weeks. A doctor finds chlorinated water in her lungs from a delayed drowning, and nurses say foreman Gary Talbot visits weekly. His wife, Sandra, explains that Amelia worked for them off the books, helping with their severely disabled daughter, Lacy. An attendant at the pool where Lacy has water therapy recalls an argument, a splash and Amelia standing soaked and crying, and Sandra is charged with attempted murder.
The Trial
Prosecutors believe Sandra attacked Amelia over an affair. Her prints on a pool pole suggest a renunciation defense, but a neighbor says Amelia avoided a doctor because her employer raised the threat of immigration agents. Sandra agrees to plead to second-degree assault with a suspended sentence, but Cutter questions her during the allocution and withdraws the offer. Phone records show no calls from Gary; instead, Amelia had left threats for Dr. Lucas Ziering, who then dropped Lacy as a patient. He had planned estrogen therapy and surgery to keep her permanently childlike, and the Talbots have since found another surgeon.
Over McCoy’s objection, Cutter seeks to add a charge of conspiring to assault Lacy. At a hearing, Dr. Nicole Peller calls the procedure untested and an affront to the child’s dignity, while surgeon Dr. Connor Dunning defends it. Cutter presses Sandra until she breaks down at his suggestion that Lacy is easier to love while small. The judge rules the procedure is not an assault, and Cutter then offers the plea again with a condition that Sandra not consent to it.
Spoiler, the ending: McCoy rejects the condition, recalling a plea in which he once made sterilization a term and was rebuked by the judge. When Cutter refuses to back off, McCoy appears in court, withdraws the condition and apologizes to the judge and Sandra. The judge accepts the plea to second-degree assault with a suspended sentence, five years’ probation and part of Gary’s pay going to Amelia’s care.
Why it stands out
- A construction-bribery case becomes a courtroom debate over using hormones and surgery to limit the growth of a severely disabled child.
- Cutter withdraws a plea deal in the middle of the defendant’s allocution after her answers expose a lie.
- McCoy steps into court himself to strike Cutter’s plea condition, admitting he overstepped in a similar case of his own.