Sanctuary (Season 4, Episode 19)
Premise: After a Jewish driver avoids charges for killing a Black boy in Harlem, a riot leaves an innocent man dead, and his young killer takes refuge in a church.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 4, Episode 19
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Mike Logan (Chris Noth)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty), ADA Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Lorraine Toussaint as Shambala Green, Tony Todd as Reverend Ott, Michael Constantine as Joshua Berger, Beatrice Winde as Corina Roberts, Damon Saleem as Daryl Johnson
- Director
- Arthur W. Forney
- Writers
- Michael S. Chernuchin & William N. Fordes
Summary
The Investigation
“Sanctuary” begins in Harlem, where 12-year-old Damon Fox runs into the street after a basketball and is killed by a blue Cadillac that does not stop. A friend tells Briscoe and Logan the driver was a white man he took to be Jewish. Joshua Berger soon arrives with his lawyer, saying he panicked after the crash. An accident expert reads the skid marks as showing Berger was going 20 to 25 miles an hour and braked before impact, so he pleads to leaving the scene and gets a suspended license and community service.
Reverend Ott, who is advising Damon’s mother, accuses the police of protecting a Jewish driver and produces a witness who claims the car was doing 50. Stone takes the case to a grand jury anyway, and it quickly declines to indict. After a speech by Ott, the neighborhood erupts, and a mob pulls lawyer John De Santis from his car and beats him to death while shouting about a Jew; De Santis is not Jewish. A news cameraman’s footage shows a rioter in a Syd’s Sneaker World cap, which leads to Daryl Johnson, who names his friend Isaac Roberts.
Roberts’ grandmother, Corina Roberts, will not say where he is and is jailed. Johnson’s one call from custody went to Ott’s church, and when the detectives arrive, Ott announces that he has given Roberts sanctuary.
The Trial
Defense attorney Shambala Green asks a judge to honor the sanctuary claim, pointing to a Manhattan church that sheltered would-be conscientious objectors in 1991. The motion is denied and Roberts is arrested. Green turns down a plea to first-degree manslaughter and offers an expert who says rioters can be swept into a collective frenzy that weakens their sense of right and wrong. Mrs. De Santis identifies Roberts as the man who smashed the car window and beat her husband.
Roberts testifies that he remembers only screaming, but under Stone’s cross-examination he admits he wanted revenge for Damon. Green then calls Berger and accuses him of racism, and the judge strikes his testimony along with the entire mob-psychology defense. Earlier, Stone and Green clash outside court over race and personal responsibility.
Spoiler, the ending: After eight days, the jury deadlocks, with five votes to acquit, four for manslaughter and three for murder, and the judge declares a mistrial. Schiff refuses to retry Roberts, saying the city needs to heal. Stone tells him that this solution is worse than the problem and that he cannot be part of it.
Why it stands out
- TV Guide ranked “Sanctuary” No. 79 on its 1997 list of the 100 greatest episodes of all time.
- The defense invokes the medieval idea of church sanctuary to shield a murder suspect from arrest, and the judge rejects it.
- The case ends in a hung jury, and Schiff declines to try it again.