Jeopardy (Season 6, Episode 4)
Premise: A triple shooting at a computer magazine points to the editor’s wealthy brother, but a judge dismisses the case midtrial, and the reason turns out to be a bribe.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 4
- 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 Frechette as Peter Nicodos, Louis Zorich as Judge Edgar Hynes, Jeffrey Donovan as Eddie Nicodos, Sada Thompson as Elaine Nicodos
- Director
- Christopher Misiano
- Writers
- René Balcer & Jeremy R. Littman
Summary
The Investigation
“Jeopardy” opens with three people shot after hours at BYTEhead, a small computer magazine: editor-in-chief Eddie Nicodos, senior editor Sally Kestler and associate publisher Jesse Rand, who fought with the gunman before he died. An office assistant survived in the bathroom. Eddie came from the family behind Nicodos Food Distribution, where his brother, Peter, is in charge; their mother, Elaine, put up the magazine’s start-up money.
A fired designer steers the detectives to writer John Wheeler, who has an alibi. Wheeler’s savage review of a CD-ROM game prompted a lawsuit against both the magazine and the family company, and a deposition video shows Peter and Eddie screaming at each other. A guard says Peter was at the company offices that night and could have slipped out through the warehouse, and his secretary’s 9 mm pistol, which fits the ballistics, is missing from her desk.
The plaintiff’s lawyer had uncovered Gaston Inc., a shell collecting $10,000 a month from the family business. It belongs to Celia Gaston, Peter’s mistress, who says Eddie exposed her to the lawyer, who then pushed Peter to settle or face exposure. Peter left her place enraged the night of the killings. Cat hairs on one victim resemble those on a suit Peter kept at her apartment, and he is arrested.
The Trial
Judge Edgar Hynes bars Celia’s testimony, then excludes a lab report matching the cat hairs because the defense got it late. When the People rest, Hynes grants a defense motion to dismiss all three murder counts, and jeopardy has attached.
Schiff, who shared a cubicle with Hynes 35 years earlier, learns over drinks that Hynes is in the middle of a divorce. An old case shows Hynes once let in an equally late ballistics report, and a court clerk reveals Hynes asked for the Nicodos case. The detectives discover Hynes and Peter’s late father were Yale classmates, and that Hynes received a $600,000 mortgage on generous terms after Elaine Nicodos pressured her bank. Confronted by Schiff, Hynes admits the arrangement.
Elaine is arrested for bribery. McCoy brings back the murder charges, arguing Peter was never truly in jeopardy because his trial was fixed, and the judge rejects defense attorney Rothenberg’s motion to dismiss.
Spoiler, the ending: To spare his mother prison, Peter Nicodos pleads guilty to three counts of second-degree murder with concurrent sentences in exchange for the charges against her being dropped. Soon after, Hynes is found dead on a beach near his home with a gunshot wound to the head.
Why it stands out
- McCoy gets around double jeopardy by arguing that a defendant whose judge was bribed was never really in jeopardy.
- The corrupt judge is an old friend of Schiff’s, and Schiff personally confronts him.