House Counsel (Season 5, Episode 10)
Premise: The murder of a bribed juror leads McCoy to prosecute a mob boss’s defense lawyer, his friend since law school.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 10
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Mike Logan (Chris Noth)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Ron Leibman as Paul Kopell, Jessica Walter as Anna Kopell, Fil Formicola as Vincent Dosso, Anthony Fusco as Murphy, Vincent Pastore as John Joseph Furini
- Director
- James Quinn
- Writers
- Michael S. Chernuchin & Barry M. Schkolnick
Summary
The Investigation
“House Counsel” opens with Parks Department accountant David Lempert shot three times outside a gym after his weekly basketball game. A witness gives a partial plate, which leads to a Lincoln registered to a doctor who died six months earlier. In the East Side garage where it is parked, someone has swapped its plate, and parking stubs there point to John Furini, a soldier in Vincent Dosso’s crime family.
Hotel shampoo bottles reveal Lempert was a sequestered juror at Dosso’s murder trial, where he was the lone holdout who hung the jury. His ex-wife admits a stranger had her call Lempert at the hotel, and afterward he paid their daughter’s college tuition in full. An organized crime wiretap catches Furini telling Dosso that “Mr. Parks” has been handled, and both men are arrested.
The Trial
Dosso’s lawyer, Paul Kopell, McCoy’s friend for 25 years, gets the tape suppressed against Dosso because Dosso called from a pay phone the warrant did not cover. McCoy squeezes Furini, who points to an apartment Dosso uses, and a new bug records Dosso discussing the killing. A judge excludes it as privileged because Kopell was present, and the case against Dosso is dismissed.
A court clerk admits selling the anonymous juror questionnaires for $5,000, and McCoy concludes Kopell used them to single out the panelist who could be bought. He charges Kopell with conspiracy to murder Lempert. To defeat the privilege claim, McCoy cuts Furini’s sentence to five years and grants him immunity, and Furini testifies that Kopell sat in while killings, including Lempert’s, were planned. The judge rules the conversations are not privileged.
Schiff criticizes the deal, Kopell’s wife, Anna, accuses McCoy of making it personal, and Kopell refuses an offer to testify against Dosso.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Paul Kopell of conspiracy to commit second-degree murder. The episode ends with no conviction of Dosso himself.
Why it stands out
- Ron Leibman and Jessica Walter, married in real life, play husband and wife Paul and Anna Kopell.
- To reach the lawyer, McCoy gives immunity to a hit man who admits to several murders, a deal Schiff criticizes.
- The case hinges on whether a lawyer who joins his client’s criminal planning can still claim attorney-client privilege.