Report Card (Season 24, Episode 5)
Premise: A 13-year-old foster child is charged as an adult with killing his teacher, and Price and Maroun trade him a deal to go after the principal who ignored a warning that the boy had a gun.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 24, Episode 5
- Detectives
- Det. Vincent Riley (Reid Scott), Det. Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), DA Nicholas Baxter (Tony Goldwyn)
- Guest stars
- Colton Osorio as Anthony Turner, Rockmond Dunbar as Principal Sykes, Mike Doyle as Terry Clausen, Okieriete Onaodowan as Mike Keyz, Chance K. Smith as Justin French
- Ripped from the headlines
- The case appears to draw on the January 2023 shooting of teacher Abby Zwerner by a six-year-old in Newport News, Virginia, after which an assistant principal who had been warned the boy had a gun was charged with felony child neglect; a judge dismissed that criminal case in May 2026.
- Director
- Néstor Carbonell
- Writers
- Pamela Wechsler & Ajani Jackson
Summary
The Investigation
“Report Card” is set on Halloween night, when middle school teacher Walter Rhodes, who drives for the ride-share service Quick Ride at night, is shot once in the chest outside his brownstone. His husband, Terry Clausen, heard the shot at about 11:15. His dashcam shows rapper Mike Keyz threatening him before the camera dies at 10:52, but Keyz was at his own party. A friend who kept calling Rhodes about a car loan was on a train from Boston.
At the school, the detectives learn that a parent once accused Rhodes of molesting his son and later punched him, even though Rhodes was cleared. The father, Nicholas Davis, blames Rhodes for his son being gay, but the boy, Luke, says Rhodes never touched him and was helping him find a way to come out. A violent rap called “202,” Rhodes’s room number, leads to seventh grader Anthony “Ant” Turner, a foster child with a juvenile record.
Cornered after he flees, Ant grabs a knife and talks of having nothing left, until Shaw calms him by asking about his father’s military patch. With his foster mother unreachable, Ant waives his rights and says Rhodes threatened to report him over the song, so he brought a gun to scare him, and it went off when Rhodes grabbed it. He says he never knew it was loaded and is arrested for murder.
The Trial
Ant is 13 years and 21 days old, and Baxter decides to try him as an adult. After the defense points to weak reading scores on his sixth-grade report card, the judge suppresses the confession. Classmate Justin French then says he saw Ant with a .38 and warned Sykes about both the gun and the song. Sykes claims he searched Ant’s locker and backpack, but school video shows he never checked the bag. Maroun pushes to charge Sykes with manslaughter, and Ant agrees to testify in exchange for a first-degree manslaughter plea and ten years. Clausen is furious and orders the prosecutors out of his house.
At Sykes’s trial, Ant says he assumed the shared neighborhood gun was empty. During a break, Shaw learns that Ant’s fingerprints are on the bullets, and Ant admits he loaded the gun. Sykes testifies that past complaints left him afraid to touch students or call the police, and he blames Ant. Shaw hesitates, then passes on the report.
Spoiler, the ending: Sykes accepts a plea to second-degree manslaughter with five years. Ant’s deal falls apart, the murder charge is reinstated, and he is driven back to court to face trial.
Why it stands out
- Ant is 13 years and 21 days old; had the shooting come three weeks sooner, he would have been too young to face adult charges.
- Shaw tells Riley he spent time in foster care himself as a boy, while his father was serving overseas.