Atonement (Season 6, Episode 18)
Premise: A young model disappears after an all-night party, and the limousine driver who killed her claims a crime of passion that covers for a drug dealer.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 18
- 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
- Michael Imperioli as Johnny Stivers, Josh Hopkins as Ken Soames, Mark Zimmerman as Frederick Scannel, Phil Coccioletti as Rick Kasteler, Joanna Merlin as defense attorney Deirdre Powell
- Director
- Martha Mitchell
- Writers
- Story: Ed Zuckerman; Story & teleplay: Morgan Gendel
Summary
The Investigation
“Atonement” begins when a purse snatcher is caught with the wallet of Sharon Lasko, a 23-year-old model reported missing three days earlier, and her bloody jacket turns up nearby. No agency knows of the photo shoot her phone message mentioned. A friend saw her at a nightclub party in close conversation with the owner, Frederick Scannel, whom organized crime detectives know as a drug trafficker who hides behind legitimate businesses.
Scannel says he was only trying to seduce her. She left with basketball player Ken Soames, who has drug suspensions, and limo driver Johnny Stivers says she refused to go upstairs with Soames before he dropped her at the Intrepid. A coffee seller saw her with a man with a camera, which leads to photographer Rick Kasteler. Her body is found in a landfill with a fractured skull.
Kasteler’s and Sharon’s prints turn up in an apartment an ad agency keeps for clients. He admits sex but says she wanted cocaine and was in the shower when he left for his son’s school play. The medical examiner finds glass in the wound, cocaine in her system, and skin under her nails from someone other than her sex partner. A call from the apartment to Stivers’s limo company was forwarded to him, and his steam-cleaned car still yields glass and blood. His home has a wall of her photos.
The Trial
Defense attorney Deirdre Powell claims extreme emotional disturbance, saying Stivers and Sharon were lovers. His sister and a coworker describe a starstruck fan, a friend of Sharon’s says she flirted with him for free cocaine, and Soames testifies that she laughed at Stivers and had sex with Soames in the back of his car. Stivers testifies that Sharon asked for coke, mocked him, and slapped him when he tried to kiss her, and that he hit her with a bottle.
McCoy and Kincaid note that Stivers said he was stuck on airport runs yet reached Sharon quickly. A limo company employee reveals that Scannel booked dummy runs with Stivers on dates when Scannel was out of town, suggesting Stivers was a drug courier. Soames recalls Sharon drunkenly telling Scannel at the party that someone had shown her a trunk full of cocaine.
Spoiler, the ending: McCoy moves to raise the charge to first-degree murder for killing a witness and brings Stivers and Scannel together. Stivers says Scannel, backed by two men with a gun, ordered him to silence Sharon, and he takes a plea to second-degree murder with the maximum sentence.
Why it stands out
- Michael Imperioli guest stars as limousine driver and murder defendant Johnny Stivers.
- The extreme emotional disturbance defense turns on how Stivers saw the relationship, not on whether Sharon returned his feelings.
- McCoy’s move to upgrade the charge to murder of a witness turns Stivers against Scannel.