Severance (Season 2, Episode 13)
Premise: A professional hit in a parking garage turns out to have been aimed at someone the police didn’t know was there.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 13
- Detectives
- Sgt. Phil Cerreta (Paul Sorvino), Det. Mike Logan (Chris Noth)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty), ADA Paul Robinette (Richard Brooks), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- George Grizzard as defense attorney Arthur Gold, Sam Groom as Larry Teasdale, Jay Devlin as Charles Martine, Steve Rankin as Frank Kemp
- Director
- James Frawley
- Writers
- Story: Michael Duggan; Teleplay: Michael S. Chernuchin; Story & teleplay: William N. Fordes
Summary
The Investigation
“Severance” opens with two advertising executives, Craig Hovis and Peter Coyle, shot dead in a Manhattan parking garage. The shooting is precise, nothing is taken, and a van with Quebec plates races out of the garage. The detectives catch the driver, Frank Kemp, at Penn Station boarding a train to Montreal with a pistol and a bloodstained knife. The gun doesn’t match, and Kemp claims his van was stolen.
A car abandoned in the same garage belongs to Janet Torrens, a bookkeeper who has been missing since the day of the shooting. She had been helping the FBI build a fraud case against her former boss, defense contractor Charles Martine, who is in jail awaiting trial. Phone records link Kemp to Martine’s lawyer, Larry Teasdale, and to a girlfriend whom Teasdale offers $25,000 to give Kemp an alibi. She wears a wire, and Teasdale is arrested and charged alongside Kemp and Martine.
The Trial
Martine hires Arthur Gold, a defense lawyer who once beat Stone by burying him in motions. The judge throws out the tape of Teasdale’s bribe because he had asked to deal with police only through his lawyer. Then Gold moves to disqualify Stone over his casual ties to Teasdale through a bar committee, and Stone responds by moving to sever Teasdale’s case so Robinette can try him separately. Schiff tells Stone he has played into Gold’s hands.
Stone turns the severance to his advantage. With Teasdale tried separately, the tape may now be usable against the others, and Stone uses that threat to press Kemp.
Spoiler, the ending: Kemp pleads to first-degree manslaughter, admits he killed Janet Torrens on Teasdale’s orders and leads police to her body. Teasdale pleads to manslaughter for 15 years. Martine pleads guilty to murder, and the judge sentences him to three consecutive terms of 25 years to life. Gold still claims the strategy was his.
Why it stands out
- George Grizzard plays Arthur Gold, a showman defense lawyer and old rival of Stone’s.
- The case turns on courtroom tactics rather than new evidence, with each side trying to make the other overreach.
- Schiff dresses down Stone for letting a personal rivalry into the courtroom.