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Law & Order · Season 24 · Episode 16

Folk Hero (Season 24, Episode 16)

Premise: When the head of the country’s largest health insurer is shot dead outside his Midtown headquarters, New Yorkers rally around the young gunman, and his lawyer argues he killed to save the lives the company’s claim denials would cost.

Air date
Season/Episode
Season 24, Episode 16
Detectives
Det. Vincent Riley (Reid Scott), Sgt. Danny DeLuca (Jesse Metcalfe), Det. Violet Yee (Connie Shi), Det. Edgar Martinez (Franco Gonzalez)
ADAs/DA
Exec. ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), DA Nicholas Baxter (Tony Goldwyn)
Guest stars
Ty Molbak as Ethan Weller, Laila Robins as defense attorney Megan Stratton, Benito Martinez as Judge William Moscatello, Henry Stram as Jordan Weiss, Laird Mackintosh as Logan Andrews
Ripped from the headlines
The episode draws on the December 4, 2024, killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside the New York Hilton Midtown, where the cartridge cases bore the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose”; the accused gunman, Luigi Mangione, arrested five days later in Altoona, Pennsylvania, was hailed by some as a folk hero.
Director
Carlos Bernard
Writers
Rick Eid & Scott Gold

Summary

The Investigation

“Folk Hero” opens outside OptiShield’s Midtown headquarters, where chief executive Logan Andrews is shot dead as he arrives for work. With Shaw out sick, Riley teams with Sgt. Danny DeLuca, and Brady runs a citywide manhunt with street cameras and police drones. The gunman, a tall, thin man in a camouflage jacket and mask, escapes on the back of a delivery truck, leaving a note that says “people over profits,” then slips away from a hardware store. A coffee shop worker, Molly Doyle, who gave him food, refuses to help police and calls him a hero.

Copycats in matching jackets soon flood Manhattan, and three of them are booked for obstruction. Andrews’s widow, Joy, points to Jerry Waldman (called Walden in the episode), the chief operating officer Andrews fired days earlier. Waldman admits sending a threatening message but says he refused to approve a claims algorithm that was wrong 85 percent of the time it denied a claim, and his alibi holds. A lookalike sighting outside EverVita, another big insurer, proves real, and police arrest Ethan Weller as he opens fire on its chief executive, Steven Jeffries.

The Trial

Spectators cheer Weller at his arraignment, where he is remanded. Baxter warns Price that the case has touched a populist nerve. Weller’s emails show OptiShield refused to pay for a drug his mother’s oncologist recommended for her metastatic breast cancer, and she died months later. Stratton delays her opening until the prosecution rests, then concedes the shooting and calls it legally justified to stop future deaths. Price says the justification statute covers only someone saving a life on the spot, but Judge William Moscatello lets the jury decide.

After insurance executives complain about the judge, Baxter sounds out Stratton about a plea; Price wants no deal, Maroun calls OptiShield’s treatment of Weller’s mother despicable, and Baxter lets the trial go on. Author Jordan Weiss estimates that the company’s delays and denials have cost 46,456 lives, as Moscatello overrules nearly every prosecution objection. Weller testifies that he waited eight days in the lobby to plead with Andrews, who brushed him off, and insists the executive’s policies killed his mother. Price then offers murder two with 15 years, and Stratton turns it down.

Spoiler, the ending: The jury sends notes asking whether the people Weller supposedly saved had to be present, and Moscatello urges jurors to follow their conscience. Price suggests seeking the judge’s removal, Baxter doubts it would help, and the two agree that the decision to go to verdict was theirs together. The foreperson begins to read the verdict on the first-degree murder charge, and the episode ends before it is heard.

Why it stands out

Themes

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