Crossing Lines (Season 24, Episode 15)
Premise: A reporter is charged with killing the senator’s son she was exposing and says he tried to rape her, and her lawyer is the woman DA Baxter is dating.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 24, Episode 15
- Detectives
- Det. Vincent Riley (Reid Scott), Det. Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks), Det. Violet Yee (Connie Shi)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), DA Nicholas Baxter (Tony Goldwyn)
- Guest stars
- Caroline Pluta as Julia Gallo, Maggie Siff as defense attorney Kate Norris, Samantha Soule as Ashley Davenport, Rotimi Paul as Doug Keller, Richard Hughes as Senator George Powers
- Ripped from the headlines
- The story reportedly draws on the September 2024 revelation that journalist Olivia Nuzzi, who had profiled Robert F. Kennedy Jr., had a personal relationship with him, which led to her departure from New York magazine.
- Director
- Fred Berner
- Writers
- Pamela Wechsler & Marley Schneier
Summary
The Investigation
“Crossing Lines” begins with a late-night phone call, and soon a man in his 50s is found at the foot of a Riverside Park staircase, struck three times with a rock. A dog walker, Doug Keller, saw him arguing with a petite woman in her 30s and heard him say that if she ruined him, he would ruin her, before she ran. Baxter’s business card in the dead man’s pocket brings Brady to the DA, who identifies James Powers, a senator’s son expected to run for governor. Baxter’s new companion, Kate Norris, is with him.
James’s parents, Senator George Powers and Frances, point to his ex, exotic dancer Rose Gregory, who once threw a glass at him. When Riley and Yee approach, Rose speeds off, hitting a cyclist, and is caught with a gun licensed in New Jersey, but club video clears her. A credit card charge leads Brady to the Fisk Club, an old-money men’s club, whose manager says Powers left agitated with a woman: fixer Ashley Davenport. She says Powers wanted a damaging New York Tribune article stopped, one that covered his killing of an endangered wolf, and planned to destroy its writer, Julia Gallo, a Pulitzer finalist once mocked over a sex tape. Powers called Gallo shortly before he died, Keller picks her from a photo lineup, and blood on her jacket leads to her arrest.
The Trial
Gallo hires Norris, and Baxter tells Price he is dating her, recuses himself and keeps the case in his office. Price turns down Norris’s offer of a manslaughter plea with five years. Norris tells the jury Gallo struck Powers to stop him from raping her. Davenport testifies that Powers planned a smear campaign, including false claims that Gallo slept with him. Senator Powers later urges Baxter to fire Price, and Norris presses Baxter to take the plea, but he will not go around Price.
Keller recants, and Price learns Norris warned him that his OnlyFans account and his daughter’s former opioid addiction could surface, though neither was admissible. Baxter confronts Norris, who admits urging Keller to step aside. Because Norris caused Keller’s absence, the judge lets Shaw repeat Keller’s account, which includes the threat but no assault. Gallo testifies that Powers groped her and she hit him in self-defense; Price impeaches her with a divorce affidavit in which she falsely denied affairs to collect on a prenuptial agreement. Maroun suggests a plea, but Price refuses to treat Gallo differently because she is a woman.
Spoiler, the ending: The prosecution never makes a plea offer, and the jury finds Gallo guilty of second-degree murder.
Why it stands out
- Kate Norris (Maggie Siff), mentioned as Baxter’s new friend in “A Price to Pay,” appears on screen; Baxter says they have known each other since working together at the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
- Baxter recuses himself over the relationship but refuses to ask for a special prosecutor, saying he will not hand a U.S. senator’s son’s murder to another office.