Brazil (Season 20, Episode 18)
Premise: The poisoning of a climate-change skeptic leads to his wife’s embittered ex-husband and a custody war over their daughter, one that puts Cutter’s own childhood on the record.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 20, Episode 18
- 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
- Tony Hale as Phillip Shoemaker, Tammy Blanchard as Dana Silva, Michael Tucker as Nelson Lehman, Julie Boyd as Sharon Lehman, Michele Pawk as defense attorney Marks
- Ripped from the headlines
- The episode was inspired by the Goldman child abduction case, in which a boy taken to Brazil by his mother in 2004 was returned to his American father in December 2009 after a long custody battle.
- Director
- Jean de Segonzac
- Writers
- Story: René Balcer; Story & teleplay: Keith Eisner
Summary
The Investigation
“Brazil” begins with a poisoning: Brazilian climate scientist Oscar Silva, a global warming skeptic, collapses with a brain hemorrhage during a New York symposium and falls into a coma. Rodgers traces it to a huge dose of methylphenidate, an amphetamine, slipped into his breakfast cereal. Stolen emails on Silva’s laptop show Dr. Everett Brown discussing adjustments to climate data, and Brown admits Silva blackmailed him into denouncing cap and trade, a shift Silva had bet on in the market, but Brown left the breakfast before Silva arrived.
Silva’s wife, Dana, flies in and tries to move him to São Paulo, but the detectives keep her in the country. A registrant who skipped the conference proves that someone else wore his name tag at the breakfast: Phillip Shoemaker, a New Jersey professor and Dana’s ex-husband. Three years earlier Dana took their daughter, Nicole, to Brazil in defiance of a shared-custody order, and Van Buren has her arrested for contempt. A mail receipt leads to Vernon Clayton, a smuggler on parole, who admits shipping methylphenidate for an anonymous buyer, and Shoemaker is arrested.
The Trial
Shoemaker is charged with attempted murder. In the custody case, his lawyer, Ms. Marks, calls Cutter to testify, questions him about his parents’ divorce and the father he rarely saw, and accuses him of pressing Dana to supply grounds for a search warrant. The family court judge gives temporary custody of Nicole to Dana’s parents, Sharon and Nelson Lehman, and Shoemaker moves to throw out the search as the product of Cutter’s bias. To save it, Cutter needs proof that Shoemaker knew Silva had an aneurysm; Dana’s lawyer, Kate Orris, supplies it after Cutter tells the judge that Nicole deserves a parent back and Dana is released to her parents’ home.
Shoemaker turns down a plea to assault with five to ten years. Then Nicole vanishes and an empty boat is found adrift on Long Island Sound before she turns up asleep in a shed. When the Lehmans seek sole custody, a fax shows Shoemaker had sent them Silva’s medical records months earlier. Sharon Lehman admits they drugged Nicole and staged the disappearance, and Nelson Lehman, tied to the money order that paid for the drug, insists he poisoned Silva alone. McCoy orders Cutter to take his plea. Called to back up Lehman’s account, Shoemaker claims he no longer cares about Nicole, until Cutter’s questioning provokes him into admitting he would even poison Silva to get her back.
Spoiler, the ending: Lehman and Shoemaker both plead guilty. Cutter notes that Nicole is left with a father and grandfather bound for prison and a mother whose choices began it all; McCoy tells him he got the right result.
Why it stands out
- Cutter is forced to testify in family court about his parents’ divorce and his mostly absent father, and the defense uses it to argue that his search was biased.
- A pre-existing aneurysm becomes the key to the case, as Cutter argues that Shoemaker’s knowledge of it would save the search evidence under the inevitable-discovery rule.
- Cutter uses the hearing on Nelson Lehman’s plea to cross-examine Shoemaker into admitting his own role.