Trust (Season 2, Episode 15)
Premise: A boy’s death in a deserted warehouse is called a gun accident, but a sealed juvenile record suggests otherwise.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 15
- 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
- Tom Mason as Ian Maser, Lizbeth Mackay as Pamela Maser, Harley Cross as Jamie Maser
- Director
- Daniel Sackheim
- Writers
- Story: Michael Duggan; Story & teleplay: René Balcer
Summary
The Investigation
“Trust” opens with 15-year-old Robbie Fenwick found shot in the head in an abandoned warehouse. The gun belongs to Ian Maser, a competitive shooter, and his son Jamie, a classmate of Robbie’s at a private school, admits firing it. Jamie first says the gun went off as Robbie reached for it, then that they were playing a game of pointing it at each other until one gave in. He insists he thought the hammer had to be cocked by hand before it would fire.
The crime-scene reconstruction doesn’t fit Jamie’s story, and the detectives learn that his parents’ divorce settlement forbids them to discuss something sealed. A detective from an old case explains: two years earlier, at 13, Jamie shot a 12-year-old boy named Graham Campbell with his father’s gun and gave the same excuse about the hammer. That death was ruled an accident.
The Trial
Stone charges Jamie as an adult with depraved-indifference murder. The defense argues that a psychiatric drug he was taking left him unable to understand what he was doing, and the judge rules the earlier shooting too prejudicial to tell the jury about. Dr. Olivet concludes Jamie is a psychologically abused boy who has learned to enjoy other people’s fear. On cross-examination, Stone has Jamie demonstrate the trigger, and he breaks down.
The jury acquits Jamie on the grounds of mental defect. Unwilling to let it end there, Stone reopens the Graham Campbell case, since murder has no statute of limitations. A firing-range owner remembers Ian Maser teaching Jamie to shoot the same type of gun he later claimed not to understand.
Spoiler, the ending: Jamie’s mother, Pamela, gives up her divorce settlement to testify that Jamie once threatened her with a gun and said Graham hadn’t believed he would shoot either. The jury convicts Jamie of second-degree murder in Graham Campbell’s death.
Why it stands out
- The prosecution loses one trial and wins a second, over a death two years older.
- A sealed juvenile record and a divorce gag order keep the key fact hidden for most of the episode.
- Pamela Maser’s decision to testify against her own son decides the case.