Blue Bamboo (Season 5, Episode 3)
Premise: A visiting Tokyo nightclub owner is shot in a Manhattan hotel, and the American singer who once worked for him says years of abuse drove her to kill.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 5, Episode 3
- 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
- Laura Linney as Martha Bowen, Glenn Kubota as Mr. Nakahara, Carolyn McCormick as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet, Joyce Reehling as defense attorney Mildred Kaskel
- Director
- Don Scardino
- Writers
- Story: Hall Powell; Teleplay: Morgan Gendel; Story & teleplay: René Balcer
Summary
The Investigation
“Blue Bamboo” starts in a hotel lobby, where Shiunro Hayashi, a Japanese nightclub owner in New York to audition singers, collapses from a small-caliber gunshot. His room has a .22 shell casing, a pulled phone cord and an empty wallet, though he had cashed $10,000 in traveler’s checks that day.
A clerk leads Briscoe and Logan to his brother-in-law, a robber who turns out to have been in jail. A waitress who left the East-West club with Hayashi has a .22 on her record, but a hair caught in his watch points to a natural blonde. A hotel cocktail waitress recalls Hayashi leaving with a blonde after calling from the lobby phones.
Phone records tie the call to jingle singer Martha Bowen, who was on the audition list, called Hayashi’s hotel three times and holds a permit for a .22 Beretta. The cocktail waitress is only “pretty sure” in a lineup, but the hair matches, and Bowen is charged with murder.
The Trial
Kincaid and McCoy learn that Bowen sang in one of Hayashi’s Tokyo clubs two years earlier. Embassy records show she was arrested there for hitting a customer and claimed Hayashi owed her pay and held her passport. The judge rules the report admissible.
Bowen’s new lawyer, Mildred Kaskel, argues battered woman syndrome. Bowen says Hayashi pushed her into prostitution and beat her. Dr. Olivet finds she fits the syndrome, but McCoy drops her as a witness after the two clash. Police find books on the syndrome in Bowen’s apartment, and on cross-examination Kincaid has her read highlighted passages that echo her own testimony. The judge tells the jury not to weigh Hayashi’s race or nationality.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury finds Bowen not guilty of second-degree murder. Afterward, McCoy apologizes to Mr. Nakahara of the Japanese consulate, who predicts the papers will call the verdict a win for women’s rights.
Why it stands out
- While consulting on the case, Dr. Olivet recalls her own past sexual assault.
- McCoy wins a ruling that Bowen’s statements to Tokyo police are admissible even though she was never read her Miranda rights.
- The defense applies battered woman syndrome to a killing that happened more than a year after the alleged abuse ended.