Intolerance (Season 2, Episode 20)
Premise: A 17-year-old honors student from Chinatown is shot three times in a dead-end courtyard on his way home from school.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 20
- 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
- Kelly Bishop as Marian Borland, Sam Rockwell as Randy Borland, Sabrina Lloyd as Kate “Katie” Silver, Pat McNamara as Ron Borland
- Director
- Steven Robman
- Writers
- Robert Nathan & Sally Nemeth
Summary
The Investigation
“Intolerance” opens as Tim Chong, a top physics student at Manhattan Science, walks home with his girlfriend, Kate Silver, and his classmate Carl Borland. Minutes after they split up, Tim is shot dead in a courtyard. Kate saw Tim speak to youths in a car, and a tattoo removal leads the detectives to the White Tigers, a gang Tim briefly joined. A gang member insists they had no reason to kill him, and the bullets match no recent gang shooting.
Tim’s physics teacher explains that Tim and Carl have been first and second in their class since freshman year, and Tim was the favorite for the Hellmuth science prize, worth $20,000. Tim’s sister, Claudia, says Carl’s mother, Marian Borland, and his older brother, Randy, made ugly phone calls to the family. Marian’s time card undercuts her alibi, and Randy’s gym sign-in sheet turns out to be faked. An anonymous caller tips Logan to a .380, the caliber ballistics identified, at the Borland apartment. Police find it there, and the gun, which carries only Ron Borland’s prints, is a match.
The Trial
Ron Borland is arrested and his lawyer offers a quick manslaughter plea, but Stone suspects Ron is covering for his wife and older son. He drops the charge against Ron and charges Marian and Randy with second-degree murder. The judge rules that the anonymous tip was not probable cause and suppresses the gun. At trial, Randy’s friend admits altering the gym sheet, and Claudia describes the calls, while the defense points to the White Tigers’ turf war.
Stone offers pleas that give Randy a lighter sentence than his mother, hoping Ron will push his wife to accept, but Marian refuses. Then Kate comes forward and testifies that she saw Randy and Marian speeding away in the fish-business truck and read its vanity plate.
Spoiler, the ending: Both Borlands are convicted of murder. Cerreta and Logan then realize the truck has had no front plate for months, so Kate could not have seen it as she described. She admits inventing the story, the convictions are thrown out with a mistrial, and Stone vows to retry the case.
Why it stands out
- A guilty verdict collapses when the detectives catch a lie by a well-meaning witness.
- The case turns on the suppression of the murder weapon over an anonymous tip.
- Sam Rockwell appears as Randy Borland, and Kelly Bishop plays his mother.