Privileged (Season 5, Episode 18)
Premise: The stabbing of a couple in their brownstone leads to a young alcoholic whose foster family once lived in the house.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 18
- 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
- Eddie Malavarca as Steven Alan Smith, David Leary as Warren Bartlett, Ali Marsh as Sally Beyers, Carolyn McCormick as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet, Katherine Borowitz as defense attorney Marjorie Larson, Fran Brill as Leah Bartlett
- Director
- Vincent Misiano
- Writers
- Jeremy R. Littman & Suzanne O'Malley
Summary
The Investigation
“Privileged” opens when a maid finds David and Eileen Lerner stabbed to death in their bed. The killer came in through a kitchen window, used a carving knife from the house, washed up at the sink and took nothing. The couple’s daughter, Elizabeth, and their ad agency staff can name no enemies, and a former partner who went bankrupt was in Kenya at the time.
Holes in the masonry show a security door once guarded the garden entrance. The previous owner was divorce lawyer Warren Bartlett, and the detectives first look at his angry clients. Then they learn that Bartlett’s foster son, Steven Smith, crashed his car near the house that night after drinking with a friend and walked off alone.
Steven is in AA, and his girlfriend, Sally Beyers, says he told his group about a blackout and nightmares in which he committed the murders. Kincaid uses that to get a court order for his fingerprints, which match a bloody thumbprint on the headboard. He is charged with two counts of second-degree murder.
The Trial
Defense lawyer Marjorie Larson argues that AA meetings should be privileged, but the judge rules that the law covers no such groups, and she switches to an insanity plea. Dr. Olivet believes Steven’s amnesia, and McCoy proposes hypnosis, promising that nothing said can be used against him. Under hypnosis Steven relives his foster mother attacking him at 12, and Larson shifts to self-defense, saying he thought he was in his foster parents’ room.
Leah Bartlett testifies that while drinking heavily she beat Steven, burned him with a cigarette and once went after him with a carving knife. McCoy then questions Warren Bartlett, who insists he never hurt the boy. Since Steven had no reason to fear his foster father, McCoy drops the count for Eileen Lerner, keeps the charge for David Lerner, and the judge bars the jury from considering self-defense.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury finds Steven Smith guilty of murdering David Lerner. Afterward the prosecutors note that the law gave them only two choices, prison or acquittal.
Why it stands out
- The judge refuses to treat statements in AA meetings as privileged, since the statute names doctors, lawyers, clergy and spouses but no self-help groups.
- McCoy drops one murder count so the jury cannot weigh self-defense, a move the defense calls prejudicial but the judge allows.
- Citing Rock v. Arkansas, the defense agrees to hypnosis only after McCoy promises that nothing Steven says under it will be used against him.