Renunciation (Season 2, Episode 9)
Premise: A hit-and-run that a witness says was deliberate points to a teacher’s affair with a 16-year-old student.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 9
- 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
- Ashley Crow as Mrs. Jenna Kealey, David Seaman as Roy Pack Jr., Victor Arnold as David Kaufer
- Director
- Gwen Arner
- Writers
- Michael S. Chernuchin & Joe Morgenstern
Summary
The Investigation
“Renunciation” begins when Larry Kealey, a bartender and former college quarterback with heavy gambling debts, is struck and killed by a dark Mercedes while walking his dog. A witness says the car waited down the block and sped up as he crossed. His wife, Jenna, a math teacher at a private school, stands to collect double the payout on his life insurance and buys their apartment the day after his death.
A neighbor’s complaints reveal loud visits on the nights Kealey worked late, and a fellow teacher says Kealey once threatened Jenna over a student she was tutoring, 16-year-old Roy Pack Jr. Roy has an alibi at the opera with his father, but his mother’s Mercedes has a broken headlight, and a garage attendant saw him driving it that night. Roy is arrested and tried as an adult.
The Trial
Roy confesses and agrees to testify against Jenna in exchange for a manslaughter plea. He says the two of them first paid a bookie, David Kaufer, to kill her husband. Jenna admits the affair and the payment but says she called the plan off, and Kaufer backs her story. Since a renounced plot isn’t a crime, the prosecutors can’t charge her, and Roy’s deal falls apart. He goes on trial for murder with Jenna as a witness against him.
The defense portrays Roy as an obsessed boy manipulated by his teacher. Then Stone notices that Kaufer’s timeline doesn’t add up, because he was in prison during the season he says the debt came from. Kaufer admits the hired-killer story was staged by Jenna to push Roy into doing it himself, and her change of heart was a cover story.
Spoiler, the ending: With two witnesses exposed as liars, the trial ends in a mistrial. Roy gets his original plea to manslaughter as a youthful offender, and Jenna Kealey is arrested for her husband’s murder.
Why it stands out
- The legal defense of renunciation, abandoning a crime before it happens, is the episode’s central puzzle.
- The case flips twice, first against the student and then against the teacher.
- A small slip in a witness’s story unravels a carefully built cover-up.