Coma (Season 5, Episode 2)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 2
- 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
- Larry Miller as Michael Dobson, Debra Monk as Kathleen O’Brien, John Cunningham as Max Weston, Phil Parolisi as Robin Wenner
- Director
- Jace Alexander
- Writers
- Ed Zuckerman
Summary
The Investigation
“Coma” begins on Riverside Drive, where a couple chasing a car radio thief finds Sandra Dobson slumped in a BMW with a bullet in her head. She survives but is left in a coma. Her husband, Michael Dobson, owns the Ha-Ha comedy club, and her necklace and purse are missing, which looks like a carjacking or robbery.
Briscoe and Logan learn that Sandra, a part-time columnist for the Westside Sentinel, had visited her sister Kathleen O’Brien that night. Kathleen says Michael hit Sandra and threatened to fight for the children if she sought a divorce. Michael’s palm print is on the car’s armrest, the notes in Sandra’s recovered purse list banks near his club, and a teller says Sandra was asking about his safe deposit box. Michael emptied the box that same afternoon and called two divorce lawyers.
Michael’s alibi has holes: his club office has a back exit, and he owns a registered .32. A search turns up a tweed jacket with a bloodstain that matches Sandra’s type, which he says came from an old bike fall. He is charged with attempted murder.
The Trial
Michael takes the children back from Kathleen after making bail. Kincaid hopes their seven-year-old daughter, Jessica, can describe a fight her parents had that night, but Jessica now tells a judge she remembers nothing, and the court refuses to move the children.
The bullet is still lodged in Sandra’s brain. Michael refuses consent to remove it, so McCoy asks a judge to make Kathleen the decision-maker. Kathleen approves the risky surgery, and Sandra dies on the operating table. The bullet does not match Michael’s gun, but McCoy upgrades the charge to murder and finds a Connecticut dealer who sold Michael a different .32. At trial, Kathleen testifies that Michael threatened her.
Spoiler, the ending: An informant leads police to a heroin user named Robin Wenner, who has just died of hepatitis; his apartment holds a white jacket, a .32 Colt and Sandra’s credit cards. The DA’s office drops the charge and Michael walks free. McCoy then sees a tape showing Wenner once performed at Michael’s club, but police can find no other link between them, and the case ends unresolved.
Why it stands out
- The story continues in the Season 6 episode “Encore.”
- The prosecution’s push to remove the bullet as evidence ends with the victim dying in surgery, turning attempted murder into a murder charge.
- Kincaid explains that under existing case law, shooting the children’s mother does not by itself make a father legally unfit to keep them.