No Good Deed (Season 23, Episode 12)
Premise: A therapist is raped and murdered days after one of her clients, a rapist Price pleaded down to five years, leaves prison, and Baxter takes over the trial himself a month before his election.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 23, Episode 12
- Detectives
- Det. Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks), Det. Vincent Riley (Reid Scott)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), DA Nicholas Baxter (Tony Goldwyn)
- Guest stars
- Tyler Elliot Burke as Shawn Payne, Kellan Rhude as Mark Salerno, Chloe Lanier as Chelsea Shell, Michael Hyatt as defense attorney Vanessa Carter, Sam McMurray as Judge Steve Nelson
- Director
- Eriq La Salle
- Writers
- Rick Eid
Summary
The Investigation
“No Good Deed” opens with therapist Angela Hart having a food delivery left at her door, then letting in a man who says he is the driver and needs to borrow a phone. She is later found beaten, sexually assaulted and stabbed in her brownstone. Her boyfriend, Mark Salerno, an actor who found the body, texted her that night that he could snap her neck and has two dismissed battery arrests; he blames the text on losing an acting job. The real driver says he only heard Angela over the intercom and noticed a man watching the building.
Salerno points to Shawn Payne, a client who wrote Angela an admiring letter from prison. Payne served five years for an aggravated rape that left his victim, Chelsea Shell, badly hurt, and has stopped answering his parole officer. Price explains that he took the plea because Shell begged him to spare her a trial and Angela vouched for Payne. Payne then leaves Shell a note asking to reconnect, Det. Yee tracks the phone number in it to the blocks near his halfway house, and detectives find a woman’s necklace in his room and catch him after a chase. Told his DNA is on Angela’s body, he asks for a lawyer and is charged with rape and murder.
The Trial
Baxter, facing a close election, takes first chair and makes Price second, saying Price’s history with Payne compromises him. Judge Steve Nelson suppresses the necklace, ruling that a parolee keeps some privacy even after going missing. Defense attorney Vanessa Carter goes after Salerno, and his former girlfriend Ella Hunter testifies that he hit her twice and threatened to kill her. Price and Baxter clash over the election, and Baxter says he has no wish to follow Jack McCoy’s example. Payne testifies that he and Angela had consensual sex that afternoon, explaining the DNA, and that he saw Salerno near her door as he left.
A partial S cut into Angela’s inner thigh resembles the S Payne carved into Shell’s leg five years earlier. Price wants to use the photos to push for a plea and spare the fragile Shell from testifying, but Baxter refuses. When Nelson resists admitting the pattern evidence, Baxter threatens an immediate appeal and a word to the press, and the judge, who Baxter says is angling for the Court of Appeals, rules for the prosecution. Shell describes the attack and identifies Payne.
Spoiler, the ending: Payne is convicted of second-degree murder, and Price and Baxter make peace. Moments later, word arrives that Shell has been taken to the emergency room after a suicide attempt.
Why it stands out
- Baxter tries the case himself, taking first chair with Price as his second, a month before his election as district attorney.
- Baxter tells Price he has no interest in becoming another Jack McCoy, addressing the shadow of McCoy, who left the office earlier in the season.
- The guilty verdict is undercut in the final scene, when the surviving victim of Payne’s earlier attack is rushed to the hospital.