Progeny (Season 5, Episode 12)
Premise: The murder of a doctor who performs abortions leads to an anti-abortion activist and the defrocked priest who leads his movement.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 12
- 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
- Edward Herrmann as Drew Seely, Thomas Schall as Randall Jenkins, Jack Gilpin as Dr. Simon Reed, Anne Bobby as Nancy Gunther
- Director
- Don Scardino
- Writers
- Story: Mark B. Perry; Teleplay: Ed Zuckerman; Story & teleplay: Morgan Gendel
Summary
The Investigation
“Progeny” begins with a midday shooting in a Midtown garage, where Dr. Eileen Reed is killed by a gunman who simply walks away. She was wearing a bulletproof vest and carried a “Wanted” poster labeling her an abortionist. Her husband, Dr. Simon Reed, explains that she spent part of each week providing abortions at a women’s clinic, and protest leader Mark Bryant insists his group did not even know her name.
At Reed’s private practice, the detectives learn a new patient, “Laura Lee,” booked the last appointment before the doctor left for the clinic and never showed up. Her fingerprints identify her as Nancy Gunther, an anti-abortion activist arrested at a Schenectady sit-in along with Harold Malcolm, who later shot a doctor in Buffalo. That protest was led by Drew Seely, a defrocked priest who welcomes the killings of doctors and admits Gunther gathered Reed’s details for him.
Checking Seely’s old arrest records, Briscoe and Logan find Randall Jenkins, who stopped getting arrested at sit-ins after an assault at a Long Island clinic left him on probation. He has vanished from his job, and his apartment yields a Bible passage about blood. Seely then stages a press event where Jenkins surrenders and declares he shot Reed.
The Trial
Charged with second-degree murder, Jenkins plans a justification defense, claiming he was protecting unborn lives, and Judge Newfield lets the jury weigh whether that belief was reasonable. The detectives then find Jenkins’s estranged wife, Joanna, who secretly had an abortion after he followed her to the clinic he attacked. With the killing now looking like revenge, Jenkins pleads to first-degree manslaughter, and Seely comes forward saying he found Reed, supplied the gun, drove Jenkins to the garage and told him to shoot. Schiff suspects Seely wants a stage, but McCoy tries him for murder.
Seely represents himself and likens his cause to John Brown’s. McCoy calls a doctor who once performed abortions and, after she says Seely would have been justified in killing her, asks that she be arrested, earning a rebuke from the bench. On cross-examination McCoy presses Seely on why he never fires the gun himself, citing his service as a conscientious objector in Vietnam and his campaign against the death penalty. Seely refuses to answer, and the judge says the jury cannot consider his justification defense.
Spoiler, the ending: Left without a defense, Seely pleads guilty to second-degree murder and receives 20 years to life. He says he will minister to prisoners.
Why it stands out
- Seely acts as his own lawyer and frames his defense around John Brown and a “higher law.”
- The justification defense collapses because Seely will not say on the stand why he never kills anyone himself.
- The defense leans on a New York ruling that treated an unborn child as a person in a prenatal abuse case to argue Jenkins’s belief was reasonable.