Rage (Season 5, Episode 13)
Premise: A Wall Street executive’s staged suicide leads to his top trader, whose lawyers argue that a lifetime of racism drove him to kill.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 13
- 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
- Courtney B. Vance as Benjamin “Bud” Greer, Wendell Pierce as Jerome Bryant, Richard Libertini as defense attorney David Solomon, Judith Moreland as Dr. Bettina Osgood, Jessica Walling as Krista Holbrook
- Ripped from the headlines
- Reportedly partly inspired by the “black rage” defense raised on behalf of Colin Ferguson, the 1993 Long Island Rail Road shooter.
- Director
- Arthur W. Forney
- Writers
- Michael S. Chernuchin
Summary
The Investigation
“Rage” opens as college student Krista Holbrook brings her boyfriend home and finds her father, Wall Street executive Wallace Holbrook, dead with a shotgun between his legs. She insists he would never kill himself, and the medical examiner agrees: his neck was broken, and the shot through his mouth was staged.
At the investment firm Jenkins, Clay, Holbrook ran a fixed-income department with enormous profits, and his traders describe a boss who mocked them over loudspeakers. His favorite, Benjamin “Bud” Greer, earned a $7 million bonus yet lives in a bare walk-up, and he claims he was not at Holbrook’s home that night. A car service driver contradicts him, and a 1987 assault arrest and an ex-girlfriend’s account of his temper add to the detectives’ doubts.
A search of Greer’s apartment turns up an accounting memo showing Holbrook asked for records of all Greer’s trades two days before the murder. An analyst explains the trades are phantom deals that book profits from fictitious buyers. A partial print in Holbrook’s bathroom leads to Greer’s arrest for murder.
The Trial
The judge excludes the trading records because the warrant covered bloody clothes, but McCoy and Kincaid get them readmitted under inevitable discovery after learning Greer was a mediocre trader before his sudden success. Civil rights lawyer Jerome Bryant joins the defense and moves to dismiss, saying police targeted Greer because he is black; the motion fails after Logan testifies he checked every trader’s record.
Bryant then builds a “black rage” defense around psychiatric expert Dr. Bettina Osgood. Testimony shows Greer was snubbed at the firm, and its chairman admits he disliked Greer, in part because he is black. Greer testifies that Holbrook laughed at him over the memo and used a racial slur, and that he remembers nothing until he saw Holbrook dead on the floor. Concerned about the jury, Schiff pushes for a deal, but Greer rejects a first-degree manslaughter plea and taunts McCoy.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Greer of second-degree murder. Afterward he hires more lawyers and announces plans to appeal.
Why it stands out
- Greer’s “black rage” defense reportedly echoes the strategy proposed for Long Island Rail Road shooter Colin Ferguson.
- Financial records thrown out as outside the search warrant come back in under the inevitable discovery rule.
- Greer’s father says his son refused to identify himself as black on his Harvard application.