Bias (Season 22, Episode 17)
Premise: Price discovers the body of a former colleague, a public defender, and the case against the judge she had been dating puts the biases of everyone involved, Price included, on trial.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 22, Episode 17
- Detectives
- Det. Frank Cosgrove (Jeffrey Donovan), Det. Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), DA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston)
- Guest stars
- Tim DeKay as Judge Ephraim Raymer, Paul Schneider as defense attorney Daniel Strawn, George Hampe as Tyler Minter, Darrin Baker as Judge Malcolm Benning, Erica Mansfield as Jessica Raymer
- Director
- Alex Hall
- Writers
- Keith Eisner
Summary
The Investigation
“Bias” opens with Nolan Price arriving half an hour late to meet Rachel Bender, a public defender and old colleague who wanted his advice, and finding her stabbed to death in Sutton Place Park. A park worker saw her arguing with a man in a long coat. Video shows her client Owen Bardo following her, but he says he was delivering an affidavit and overheard her asking about a protective order, which her supervisor, Manny Carter, confirms. The son of a client sentenced for a triple homicide, Luis Cortez, once lunged at her in court, but he had since sent her flowers, and his phone and knife clear him.
The shoe print comes from an expensive Italian loafer, and a tip from Bender’s mother leads to Adam Grassley, whose daughter’s accused killer Bender got acquitted; he says her boyfriend followed him out of a restaurant, shouting at him to stay away from her. Early-morning coffee purchases in the Village lead to a barista who saw Bender arguing with Judge Ephraim Raymer because she would not take him back. The detectives arrest Raymer in his chambers after a search turns up size 11 loafers matching the print, and he has a cut on his right palm. His clerk, Tyler Minter, first gives him an alibi, then admits to Price that he dropped Raymer near Bender’s office.
The Trial
Judge Malcolm Benning bars testimony from Raymer’s ex-wife, Jessica, that he stalked and hit her, and when Price learns Benning went to Harvard with Raymer and seeks his recusal, Benning refuses. Defense attorney Daniel Strawn tells jurors Price is targeting a judge who often ruled against him. Minter returns to the alibi on the stand after a long morning call with Raymer, and Strawn then subpoenas Price, shows a 2012 photo of him kissing Bender and suggests Price could be the killer. Maroun is angry he never told her about it.
Threatened with perjury, Minter reveals that Raymer planned to propose to Bender in a park near her office. Video of the proposal leads to a doorman, Drew, who says she refused and Raymer warned she would be sorry. Drew has a 2015 conviction for harassing an ex-girlfriend, so Price decides not to call him; when Maroun says the record must still go to the defense, Price argues it would not change the outcome and says the decision is his.
Spoiler, the ending: During two days of deliberation, Price is told he should never have taken a case in which he found the body and had once been involved with the victim. The jury then convicts Raymer of second-degree murder, and Maroun says they did what they had to while hoping Bender was not watching.
Why it stands out
- Price becomes a defense witness in his own prosecution and is confronted with a photo of himself kissing the victim a decade earlier.
- The trial judge is the defendant’s Harvard classmate, and the prosecution’s motion to have him step aside is denied.