Bad Faith (Season 5, Episode 20)
Premise: A sex crimes detective who grew up with Logan is found shot in Riverside Park, and the trail leads to the former priest who abused boys in their old parish.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 20
- 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
- Bill Raymond as Father Joseph Krolinsky, Kit Flanagan as Defense Attorney Joan Zinns, Jan Leslie Harding as Judy Marino, Scott Sowers as Stewart Waller, Stewart J. Zully as Scully, Carolyn McCormick as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet
- Ripped from the headlines
- Based on the case of James Porter, a former Catholic priest.
- Director
- Dann Florek
- Writers
- René Balcer
Summary
The Investigation
“Bad Faith” opens with the body of Det. Bill Marino, a sex crimes investigator, in Riverside Park. Logan grew up three stoops from Marino and knew him since kindergarten. Marino’s widow, Judy, says he had been pacing at night and that a “Father Joe” had called him. Logan recognizes the name: Joseph Krolinsky, the parish priest who ran the altar boys in their old neighborhood, now a married insurance supervisor living two blocks from the shooting.
Logan privately tells Cragen that Krolinsky once made advances toward him and abused other boys, Marino among them. Old parishioners confirm it, and one, Scully, says Krolinsky offered Marino money to go away. Then the lab matches the bullet to Marino’s own service revolver: the responding officers admit they found him with the gun in his hand and hid it so his widow would collect a line-of-duty payout. The death is a suicide.
The Trial
Kincaid notes the statute of limitations has long run on Krolinsky’s 1960s abuse. McCoy refiles a never-prosecuted 1968 arrest involving Stewart Waller as a felony, but the judge dismisses it. The archdiocese then hands over files showing about 100 reports against Krolinsky, who was repeatedly treated and moved to new parishes. McCoy charges a continuing conspiracy, naming the church as an unindicted co-conspirator and pointing to a $50,000 payment that turns up in T-bills Judy Marino bought for her children.
Defense attorney Joan Zinns claims Marino had recruited boys for Krolinsky as a child, so the money was a payment between accomplices, not a bribe. Subpoenaed by the defense, Logan admits under oath that Marino once tried to recruit him. Briscoe and Logan then learn that Krolinsky’s wife reported finding him with their nine-year-old son three years earlier before taking it back, and that Marino had obtained that New Jersey file. McCoy argues the report was the leverage behind the payoff.
Spoiler, the ending: Krolinsky pleads guilty to reduced felony counts, and the judge sentences him to 15 years. As he is led away, Logan asks him how he could do it to them, and to his own son.
Why it stands out
- The episode was based on the case of former priest James Porter.
- With the abuse beyond the statute of limitations, McCoy builds a conspiracy case that names the Catholic Church as an unindicted co-conspirator.
- Logan is forced to testify for the defense about his own childhood encounter with the man on trial.