Pride (Season 5, Episode 23)
Premise: An openly gay city councilman is shot on a Greenwich Village street, and suspicion falls on his young live-in partner and on a conservative rival.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 23
- 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
- Daniel Hugh Kelly as Councilman Kevin Crossley, Richard Bekins as Councilman Richard Durban, Mitchell Lichtenstein as Joe Gibb, Robert Joy as Leo Barnett, Peter Gerety as Defense Attorney Charles Powell, John Cameron Mitchell as Eddie
- Director
- Ed Sherin
- Writers
- Ed Zuckerman & Gene Ritchings
Summary
The Investigation
“Pride” opens as Councilman Richard Durban leaves a heated community meeting and is shot in the head at Bleecker and 7th. A witness saw a man in a green raincoat, and police find the coat and a .22 in a trash can. Durban’s ex-wife tells the detectives he had a young man named Joe living with him.
Joe Gibb has cleared out of the apartment. By setting up a date with Eddie, a hustler who works through Gibb, Briscoe and Logan learn Gibb was running an escort service from Durban’s home, and they find him at a hotel with Durban’s belongings. Gibb says he was with a client, Leo Barnett, at the time of the shooting, and that he saw Councilman Kevin Crossley at the door half an hour earlier in a green coat. When the detectives press the married Barnett at home, he wavers on the time.
Crossley, a former Canarsie cop, staged mock debates with Durban, who had quietly helped erase Crossley’s council district in redistricting. The gun traces to a 1985 Canarsie burglary arrest of Crossley’s in which one of 16 seized guns never reached the evidence room. Hairs on the coat are consistent with Crossley’s, and he is charged with murder.
The Trial
Defense attorney Charles Powell hints in court that he knows where Barnett parks near the 12th Avenue piers, and Barnett concedes he may have left Gibb before 10:00. To explain the shift, Logan testifies that he and Briscoe threatened to tell Barnett’s wife about his visits to gay prostitutes. Powell then questions Logan about a crude police term for murders in gay neighborhoods.
On the stand, Crossley says he and Durban were friends. Under McCoy’s cross he launches into an attack on Durban’s sex life, setting off shouting from gay activists in the gallery.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury deadlocks and the judge declares a mistrial. Afterward, amid jeering protesters, Logan punches Crossley, and the prosecutors expect him to end up walking a beat on Staten Island.
Why it stands out
- “Pride” is Chris Noth’s last appearance as Det. Mike Logan.
- The punch gets Logan transferred to Staten Island; the character returned in 1998 in Exiled: A Law & Order Movie.
- Logan admits in open court that he and Briscoe used the threat of exposure to pressure a witness.