Chain of Command (Season 22, Episode 8)
Premise: A retired Army colonel turned retail executive is shot behind his home, and the killing traces back to men from his old command who blame him for the burn pits that sickened them in Iraq.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 22, Episode 8
- 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
- Trevor Peterson as Luke Fallon, Kenneth Trujillo as Vincent Martinez, Marsha Stephanie Blake as defense attorney Erica Knight, Dipa Anitia as Sonya Chakrabarti, Michael Bakkensen as Brice Crawford
- Ripped from the headlines
- The episode appears to draw on the health problems reported by veterans exposed to smoke from the burn pits that U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan used to dispose of waste.
- Director
- Carlos Bernard
- Writers
- Art Alamo & Gia Gordon
Summary
The Investigation
“Chain of Command” opens with retired Army colonel Alexander Lockett shot three times in the chest outside his home after midnight; minutes later his security footage is deleted through the app on his own phone. Lockett, a former Iraq base commander who became chief revenue officer at the department store chain Finley & Madison, argued with his girlfriend at dinner, and the company’s finance chief, Sonya Chakrabarti, had thrown a paperweight at him. She says she was furious that he arranged a $300 million bank loan on inflated forecasts behind her back. The chief executive admits ordering the loan and visiting Lockett that night but says he left before midnight.
Lockett’s daughter, Melinda, discovers that his Distinguished Service Cross is gone. Traffic cameras catch a truck circling the block, registered to Shane Risner, a soldier whose 2008 court-martial and dishonorable discharge Lockett signed, but Risner died by suicide the day before the murder. His friend Vincent Martinez, who bought the truck, runs from Risner’s funeral; Martinez has an alibi and explains that Risner was dying of lung disease blamed on burn pits in Iraq. Lockett’s blood turns up in the truck, and prints there belong to a third member of the unit, Luke Fallon, who owns a 9-millimeter pistol. He is arrested in Queens carrying the missing medal.
The Trial
Martinez refuses to say he lent Fallon the truck and is jailed for contempt. Retracing the trips Risner’s friends made to his hospital, investigators recover the gun from a lake in a New Jersey park, and ballistics tie it to the killing. Fallon then pleads not guilty by reason of mental disease, citing a newly diagnosed glioblastoma that his expert links to the burn pits; under cross-examination she concedes the tumor did not make him borrow the truck or wait outside for 20 minutes. Fallon testifies that Lockett refused to apologize and that he blacked out.
An Army public affairs officer, Brice Crawford, hands over a newly declassified 2008 report saying Fallon killed an unarmed Iraqi civilian. Martinez tells Price the report covers up a mission built on bad intelligence, Maroun refuses to trust it, and McCoy pulls rank, ordering them to use it unless they can win another way. Lockett’s retirement papers then show he left the Army after four years of denied requests to stop the burn pits, and Fallon breaks down when the letter is put to him on the stand.
Spoiler, the ending: Fallon is convicted of second-degree murder, and Melinda is promised the return of her father’s medal. The episode closes on Lockett’s choice to keep following orders he believed were wrong.
Why it stands out
- McCoy pulls rank on his prosecutors, ordering them to use an Army report that Maroun believes is a cover-up.
- The victim turns out to have quit the Army in protest over the burn pits his soldiers blamed him for.