Family Ties (Season 23, Episode 9)
Premise: A congressional aide who reported her boss to the FBI is bludgeoned in her apartment, but the killer turns out to be the Ukrainian refugee carrying the baby she and her husband hoped to raise.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 23, Episode 9
- 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
- Sabrina Schlegel-Mejia as Darina Meleshko, Christopher M. Lindsay as Tom Porter, Kushtrim Hoxha as Pavlo Golub, Max von Essen as Rhett Richards, Sara Haider as defense attorney Wendy Stratford
- Director
- Michael Pressman
- Writers
- Pamela Wechsler & Ted Malawer
Summary
The Investigation
“Family Ties” opens with a woman being sworn in before a federal grand jury. Eileen Porter, an aide to Congressman Rhett Richards, is then found dead of head wounds at home, and her husband, Tom, is hospitalized unconscious. A rinsed hammer holds both victims’ blood and a stranger’s. Eileen had reported Richards for spending campaign money on luxuries and was due to testify against him, and a former colleague says he warned Eileen she would regret it, but he has a fundraiser alibi.
Eileen’s brother, Kevin Marshall, who had confronted her over their inheritance, was at work all night. A paroled burglar she hired for odd jobs mentions a woman living in the Porters’ spare room, and her hairbrush matches the stranger’s DNA.
A $50,000 payment leads to Pavlo Golub, a broker who pairs couples with Ukrainian surrogates. The woman is Darina Meleshko, 24, of Kyiv, whom Golub has since placed with a Riverdale couple for $250,000, passing the baby off as hers. Found with a gash on her hand, she struggles with detectives and goes into labor.
The Trial
Days after giving birth, Darina is held without bail. Her lawyer, Wendy Stratford, wins suppression of the hammer because Darina, who still had keys and belongings in the apartment, had not fully moved out. Golub demands full immunity to testify, and the office refuses.
Tom, who cannot remember the attack, pleads from the stand to hold his daughter. After the medical examiner describes eight blows, Stratford abruptly switches to an insanity defense, and a psychiatrist testifies that Darina has PTSD from seeing her husband and infant son killed when her Kyiv home was bombed.
Against an offer of 15 years for manslaughter, Stratford seeks five, offering Darina’s surrender of parental rights: she alone signed the birth certificate, so New York treats her as the only parent. Tom begs Price to accept, but the deal is refused because the baby is being used as leverage. Baxter gives the cross-examination to Maroun, whose family fled Lebanon’s civil war. When her first questions are gentle, Price tells her during a recess to resign or rise to the occasion, and she returns to confront Darina with the savagery of the attack, the washed hammer and the next-day trip to sell the baby.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury finds Darina guilty. Afterward, Tom asks what the verdict means for his daughter, who remains legally Darina’s child, and no one can tell him.
Why it stands out
- Maroun’s family history shapes the case: her parents and grandparents fled Lebanon during its civil war, and Baxter cites that background when he hands her the cross-examination.
- Price tells Maroun that the year before he argued for a death sentence on McCoy’s orders, against his own beliefs, because prosecutors serve at the district attorney’s pleasure.
- The verdict leaves the surrogacy unresolved: the newborn’s intended father is still not her legal parent when the episode ends.