The Taxman Cometh (Season 20, Episode 20)
Premise: An heiress’s heroin death points detectives to a fringe cancer clinic where wealthy patients all died in 2010, the one year their heirs owed no federal estate tax, and to the accountant who sent them there.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 20, Episode 20
- 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
- Robin Weigert as Catherine Douglas, Clea DuVall as Amanda Green, Mark Linn-Baker as Dr. Vincent Balicheck, Damian Young as Bruce Graham, Daniel Abeles as Randy Colwyn
- Director
- Fred Berner
- Writers
- Story: Ed Zuckerman; Story & teleplay: William N. Fordes
Summary
The Investigation
“The Taxman Cometh” starts with an apparent heroin overdose: heiress Annie Douglas is found dead in a limousine outside her family’s townhouse after a night out with her cousin, Randy Colwyn, who left the car for ten minutes during the ride. A dealer near the stop admits selling Randy heroin and needles, and Annie’s death enlarges Randy’s share of their grandfather’s estate, but he pleads to criminal facilitation and gets six months.
Randy mentions that the grandfather, billionaire Henry Douglas, died at the Balicheck Clinic rather than at the cancer pavilion he funded, where Van Buren has had her own tests. Doctors there say treatment could have given him another year or two, but his daughter Catherine moved him to Dr. Vincent Balicheck, who relies on hormones and supplements and has faced many malpractice suits. Other wealthy patients also died there after leaving top hospitals.
All of those deaths fell in 2010, the one year federal law left estates untaxed, and one patient expected to die in late 2009 survived into the new year. Catherine’s former partner, Amanda Green, recalls Catherine joking after a meeting with her accountant that her father ought to die in 2010. That accountant, Bruce Graham, also advises Roger Weil and Louise Casey, whose parents died at the clinic, has handled Balicheck’s malpractice payouts and is executor of all three estates. All five are arrested together.
The Trial
Graham and Balicheck face three murder counts, and Catherine, Weil and Casey one each. The judge dismisses the case against Casey, since no law bars keeping someone alive, and orders separate trials. The prosecutors then learn that Catherine legally adopted Amanda, a route many gay couples took before same-sex marriage, so a conviction would pass Catherine’s roughly $50 million share to Amanda, who is pregnant and will not renounce it. Cutter gets a family court judge to void the adoption as a marriage in all but name, but the judge then grants the pair spousal privilege. Trial judge John Laramie rejects the privilege, and Amanda recants.
Balicheck, who denounces chemotherapy, used it on Casey’s father. Cutter drops the charges against him, and the doctor admits Graham pushed him to keep that patient alive until January. He also reveals that Amanda conceived by IVF with Catherine’s egg, giving Catherine a claim to the baby. Borrowing from King Solomon, the prosecutors bring in Randy and propose that he serve his sentence at home raising the child.
Spoiler, the ending: When Amanda offers to testify after all, Catherine instead names Graham as the planner and pleads guilty to manslaughter with prison time; the baby stays with Amanda. Graham pleads guilty to one count and takes ten years. The prosecutors admit the Randy plan was a bluff.
Why it stands out
- The plot turns on the real lapse of the federal estate tax in 2010, when a scheduled phase-out briefly eliminated it.
- Cutter’s family court victory backfires when the judge treats the voided adoption as a marriage and extends spousal privilege to the two women, earning him the nickname “Boomerang Mike.”
- Van Buren, in treatment for cancer, says she has had tests at the dead billionaire’s cancer pavilion and jokes that the case may turn up a better doctor.