Slave (Season 6, Episode 19)
Premise: A woman is killed in her bed by a stray bullet fired from a nearby rooftop, and the shooter turns out to be a 13-year-old boy working for a crack dealer.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 19
- 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
- Adam Zolotin as Lonnie Rickman, Karen Young as Cassie Rickman, Agustin as Ross Morales, George Gore II as Clayton Doyle, Welker White as defense attorney Marla Rubinoff, Carolyn McCormick as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet
- Director
- Jace Alexander
- Writers
- René Balcer & Elaine Loeser
Summary
The Investigation
“Slave” opens when Leslie Merrick comes home to find her mother, Carol, shot dead in bed beside her father, who drank himself into a blackout and remembers nothing. A past domestic complaint makes him the obvious suspect, but ballistics finds the 9 mm bullet was fired from at least 50 yards off, and a patrol officer admits he closed the open bedroom window. The trajectory leads to a rooftop across the street with a spent casing and drops of blood.
A boy in that building saw two older kids on the roof, one called “Nacho,” which leads to 13-year-old Lonnie Rickman, whose mother, Cassie, uses crack. Lonnie says he was playing basketball with Clayton Doyle. Clayton’s parents say he came home with a head wound and had $300 in his pocket. After his father grabs him in the interrogation room, Clayton says Lonnie shot at him on drug dealer Ross Morales’s orders because he wanted out of the crew.
Their lieutenant reprimands Curtis for letting the father get physical. A raid at Morales’s drug apartment nets Morales for possession and Lonnie for Carol Merrick’s murder and Clayton’s attempted murder.
The Trial
With his mother waiving counsel, Lonnie insists he acted alone. Defense attorney Marla Rubinoff argues that neither a 13-year-old nor a mother on crack could waive his rights; the judge keeps the confession but weighs sending the case to Family Court. A court psychiatrist concludes that his mother abused him and recommends Family Court, while Schiff opposes leniency.
Clayton’s mother and an emergency room doctor describe Lonnie going hungry and overdosing, and Morales paying his hospital bill in cash and taking him away. When a judge threatens to toss Morales’s drug charge, McCoy adds kidnapping, and Cassie says she let Morales look after her son. The prosecutors realize she handed Lonnie over to settle her drug debt, but Lonnie refuses to accuse her, and Rubinoff notes that no statute bans selling a child.
Cassie refuses to testify and dismisses her son as a nuisance. Lonnie then takes a deal and testifies that Morales gave him the gun, that he missed Clayton on purpose, and that his mother owed Morales $865.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Ross Morales of second-degree murder. In Family Court, Lonnie is sentenced to five years in a juvenile facility, with psychiatric counseling during and after his term.
Why it stands out
- Lonnie’s confession survives a challenge arguing that his mother, high on crack, could not waive counsel for him.
- McCoy and Kincaid argue over drug policy, with Kincaid calling the drug war a lost cause and McCoy opposing legalization.
- The defense points out that selling a child to a drug dealer breaks no specific law, leaving McCoy to rely on other charges for leverage.