Law & Order Season 5 Episode Guide
Plot summaries for the fifth season of Law & Order, which aired on NBC from September 1994 to May 1995, featuring Det. Lennie Briscoe, Det. Mike Logan, Lt. Anita Van Buren, Executive ADA Jack McCoy, ADA Claire Kincaid and DA Adam Schiff.
- 1
Second Opinion
A teacher with breast cancer dies after skipping surgery for an unapproved treatment, and the DA’s office tries to hold the woman who sold it responsible for her death.
- 2
Coma
A part-time newspaper columnist is shot in the head on Riverside Drive, and the investigation zeroes in on the controlling husband she was planning to divorce.
- 3
Blue Bamboo
A visiting Tokyo nightclub owner is shot in a Manhattan hotel, and the American singer who once worked for him says years of abuse drove her to kill.
- 4
Family Values
A wealthy publisher disappears in an apparent suicide, and the case exposes her husband’s affair with her teenage daughter.
- 5
White Rabbit
Loot from a safe deposit burglary leads police to a 1971 payroll robbery in which a cop was killed, and to a suburban mother who has been a fugitive ever since.
- 6
Competence
Lt. Van Buren kills an unarmed, mentally disabled 14-year-old during an attempted ATM robbery, and the question of who had a gun follows the case into court.
- 7
Precious
A reported baby kidnapping turns into a murder case against a mother whose earlier infants also died suddenly.
- 8
Virtue
A young campaign worker’s death after a fundraiser leads to a city councilman and a novel extortion charge over sex demanded for a law partnership.
- 9
Scoundrels
A lawyer’s murder exposes a scheme to fleece victims of a savings and loan swindler, and McCoy goes after the swindler himself.
- 10
House Counsel
The murder of a bribed juror leads McCoy to prosecute a mob boss’s defense lawyer, his friend since law school.
- 11
Guardian
A young heroin addict from a wealthy family is found dead outside a daycare center, and the trail leads to the man who manages her family’s money.
- 12
Progeny
The murder of a doctor who performs abortions leads to an anti-abortion activist and the defrocked priest who leads his movement.
- 13
Rage
A Wall Street executive’s staged suicide leads to his top trader, whose lawyers argue that a lifetime of racism drove him to kill.
- 14
Performance
A videotape that seems to show a girl’s rape and murder leads detectives to a high school clique that keeps score of its sexual conquests.
- 15
Seed
A woman shot in a bank leads detectives to a fertility doctor who faked pregnancies and secretly fathered dozens of his patients’ babies.
- 16
Wannabe
The shooting of a corporate turnaround expert leads to a subway track walker whose son was expelled from an elite private school.
- 17
Act of God
A bombing that topples a building under renovation pits a bankrupt contractor against a jealous husband trained in explosives.
- 18
Privileged
The stabbing of a couple in their brownstone leads to a young alcoholic whose foster family once lived in the house.
- 19
Cruel and Unusual
The death of an autistic teenager at the precinct leads to a clinic director whose aversion therapy crossed into abuse.
- 20
Bad Faith
A sex crimes detective who grew up with Logan is found shot in Riverside Park, and the trail leads to the former priest who abused boys in their old parish.
- 21
Purple Heart
A radio-car driver with a Purple Heart is shot dead in his cab, and the robbery behind it starts to look like a contract killing.
- 22
Switch
A free-clinic psychiatrist is beaten to death after hours, and the case turns on a patient diagnosed with multiple personality disorder and her estranged father.
- 23
Pride
An openly gay city councilman is shot on a Greenwich Village street, and suspicion falls on his young live-in partner and on a conservative rival.