Facade (Season 23, Episode 8)
Premise: A young Black comedian dies in a chokehold on a late-night subway train, the white teacher who held him says he was rescuing a woman, and the trail leads to a gym that fronts for a white supremacist network.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 23, Episode 8
- 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
- Daniel Marconi as Brandon Arnou, Zak Orth as defense attorney Harry Kagan, Kevin Makely as Domhnall Kovac, Ashlyn Fitch as Rebecca Lasky, Kameron Kierce as Michael Zane
- Ripped from the headlines
- The subway chokehold case appears to draw on the May 2023 death of Jordan Neely, a Black homeless man who died after a former Marine held him in a chokehold on a train in Manhattan.
- Director
- Michael Smith
- Writers
- Art Alamo & Ajani Jackson
Summary
The Investigation
“Facade” opens on a late-night subway car where Ellis Joyner, a 24-year-old stand-up comic, is soon found dead. The medical examiner finds he died in a carotid sleeper hold, probably during an attack of his severe asthma, and his phone is missing.
Street video shows comedian Malcolm Paige, who traded insults with Joyner after a show and took a swing at him, but his car service clears him, and he says Joyner left with a man. Dating-app messages show that Joyner, who was not openly gay, was seeing Michael Zane, who describes a white man in neon yellow sneakers and a logo hoodie blocking his path on the train. The logo leads to Domhnall Kovac’s MMA gym; Kovac has an 88 tattoo and has four assault convictions involving Black men; he has an alibi, but the outfit is his Combat Academy uniform.
Academy member Brandon Arnou, an elementary school teacher with a split lip, admits killing Joyner but says Joyner was attacking a woman dressed like a dancer. No such woman shows up on platform video, and Joyner’s phone turns up in Arnou’s gym locker. Arnou is arrested.
The Trial
The phone, knocked face down, kept recording: Joyner gasps that he cannot breathe, then three silent minutes pass before Arnou lets go. Price favors manslaughter, but Baxter, invoking George Floyd, orders a murder charge. The medical examiner concedes that adrenaline could have kept Arnou from noticing Joyner had passed out, and defense attorney Harry Kagan attacks Zane’s record. Kagan then produces a surprise witness, Rebecca Lasky, who says Joyner lunged at her and reached into his pocket before Arnou intervened. Baxter rejects a manslaughter offer, and Price gets Lasky to admit she saw no weapon, left the train before the choking and may have mistaken an asthma attack for aggression. She also recalls Arnou shouting about blood and dirt, possibly the Nazi slogan “blood and soil.”
Maroun questions a trainer at Kovac’s gym who turns out to be an undercover detective. Police officials tell Baxter the gym is one of more than 30 “active clubs” in a white supremacist network, that Kovac is stockpiling weapons and that an attack like January 6 may be planned. Baxter keeps the undercover off the stand. Price instead treats Kovac as hostile, and Kovac admits teaching Arnou chokeholds and that the slogan, for him, means pride in being white.
Spoiler, the ending: Price argues that Arnou kept choking Joyner long after he stopped being a threat, but the jury acquits Arnou of murder. Price tells Baxter they chose not to do better for the greater good; Baxter stands by his decision, saying the network will be brought down and Price will come to agree.
Why it stands out
- The title refers to the MMA gyms that, as police officials explain, serve as a front for white supremacist recruiting and training.
- Baxter overrules Price three times, raising the charge to murder, turning down a mid-trial manslaughter offer and keeping a key undercover witness off the stand, and the case ends in an acquittal.