Deceit (Season 6, Episode 17)
Premise: A closeted corporate lawyer is shot dead hours after threatening to sue the law firm that fired him for being gay, and suspicion settles on the senior partner who had been pursuing him.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 17
- 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
- Peter Riegert as Jerold Dixon, Mary Beth Hurt as Sela Dixon, Robert Sella as Tony Conneca, Tom O’Rourke as defense attorney Peter Behrens, Peter Ratray as Charles Hanna
- Director
- Vincent Misiano
- Writers
- René Balcer & Eddie Feldmann
Summary
The Investigation
“Deceit” opens when a cleaning woman finds attorney Elliot Wells, 35, shot three times with a .22 in his locked apartment. A neighbor mentions a brunette girlfriend named Liza and a car that watched the building for a month; it belonged to a security firm Wells’s law firm hired while he represented a paper company against environmentalists. A protest leader has an alibi.
Surveillance notes lead to “Liza,” who is Tony Conneca, a female impersonator and Wells’s former boyfriend. He says Wells hid his sexuality and had found someone else. Tony’s cabaret alibi covers only the hours after 8, and he lied about calling Wells. The morning he died, Wells called a sexual harassment firm about a gay client who had been fired, then phoned senior partner Jerold Dixon at home. Dixon says he learned Wells was gay when a man with a British accent answered Wells’s phone early one morning.
Flowers sent to Wells lead to a Village sublet rented as “Stuart,” where photos show Dixon himself. With Van Buren demanding probable cause, the detectives wire Tony, who tells Dixon he saw him leave Wells’s building. Static garbles part of the tape, but Dixon brings a cash payoff to a second meeting and is arrested.
The Trial
Defense attorney Peter Behrens says Dixon was at a University Club dinner. Tony admits he threatened to out Dixon, and the judge rules the payment was a response to that threat, not an admission, suppresses it and dismisses the charge. DNA then confirms Wells’s blood in Dixon’s hideaway. Dinner guests put Dixon there late, a charity worker says he harassed her and Sela Dixon paid her off, and a doorman says the couple left home separately before 7. Dixon is charged again.
Dixon takes a polygraph, which supports his denial of the shooting and his claim that he was with his wife. Suspecting Sela, McCoy and Kincaid hear from the babysitter about a tearful Saturday and a cheerful Sunday, and Sela cannot produce her dinner dress. Offered immunity and told his wife will be tried for murder, Dixon explains that Sela blamed Wells and made him fire Wells. When Wells threatened to sue, Sela took Dixon’s gun to Wells’s apartment; Dixon followed, found Wells dead, took the gun, wiped the rooms and threw the weapon in the East River.
Spoiler, the ending: Briscoe and Curtis arrive at the Dixon home with a warrant and arrest Sela Dixon for the murder of Elliot Wells.
Why it stands out
- The first case against Dixon is thrown out because the police informant threatened to reveal that he was gay, which the judge treats as coercion.
- McCoy argues that spousal privilege covers private conversations between spouses, not seeing a spouse commit a shooting.
- After the first dismissal, Schiff insists that no one else be arrested without a grand jury indictment.