Charm City (Season 6, Episode 13)
Premise: A chemical bomb on a downtown subway train kills 20 Black passengers, bringing Baltimore homicide detectives to New York and sending McCoy to try the case before a Westchester jury.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 13
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Andre Braugher as Det. Frank Pembleton, Kyle Secor as Det. Tim Bayliss, Richard Belzer as Det. John Munch, Kevin Geer as Brian Egan, Leo Burmester as defense attorney Le Clair
- Director
- Ed Sherin
- Writers
- Michael S. Chernuchin & Jorge Zamacona
Summary
The Investigation
“Charm City” opens with smoke filling a downtown No. 9 train near Columbia during the morning rush, killing 20 people, all of them Black. The lab identifies the poison as cacodyl, made with metallic arsenic, a regulated chemical, and the device appears to have sat in a paper bag. Survivor George Bell, whose 15-year-old son died, recalls the only white man in the car clutching a bag next to his son and later leaving without it, and he helps a police artist draw the man.
In Baltimore, Det. Frank Pembleton links the case to an unsolved arsenic gas bombing of a church five years earlier that killed six. He and Det. Tim Bayliss travel to New York, get a cool welcome, and work on their own, faxing the sketch to chemical firms until one names Brian Egan, a part-time driver for Berkman Chemical. A stolen Lincoln with Maryland plates leads Briscoe and Curtis to a seedy hotel where the man signed in as R. Reagan, and they arrest Egan, who carries no ID.
Pembleton takes over the questioning and, by invoking Egan’s wife and son, gets him to say he did not know children were inside the Baltimore church. Briscoe and Curtis protest that Egan had already said he could not talk.
The Trial
Defense attorney Le Clair, also from Baltimore, wins a move to Westchester County. Because Egan only shrugged when asked whether he wanted to stay silent, the judge throws out his statement, and Curtis and Pembleton trade insults. Bayliss brings in Mrs. Chapman, who saw a white man in an army jacket run from the church but cannot identify him; Le Clair raises her conversion to Islam and asks about Farrakhan. He also names Black passengers with prison records and presses Pembleton about his open cases.
Bell identifies Egan in court, and a partial thumbprint and burn marks tie him to the seat. Le Clair rests without calling witnesses and urges the jury to stop letting whites be blamed. McCoy replies that the jury can widen the racial divide or uphold equal protection.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Egan of first-degree murder. When McCoy offers to drop the death penalty request in exchange for the names of his co-conspirators, Egan refuses, saying he is just the tip of the iceberg.
Why it stands out
- The episode begins a crossover with Homicide: Life on the Street that concludes in the Homicide episode “For God and Country.”
- Pembleton’s interrogation, which he says would pass in Maryland, is excluded under New York law because Egan never explicitly waived his right to silence.
- Le Clair’s venue motion moves a case about 20 Black victims to a Westchester jury.