Hot Pursuit (Season 6, Episode 5)
Premise: Police end a deadly robbery spree and free the gunman’s female partner, a Connecticut kidnapping victim, but McCoy believes she became a willing accomplice.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 5
- 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
- Amanda Peet as Leslie Harlan, Tovah Feldshuh as Danielle Melnick, Anne Twomey as Mrs. Harlan, Carolyn McCormick as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet
- Director
- Lewis H. Gould
- Writers
- Ed Zuckerman & Morgan Gendel
Summary
The Investigation
“Hot Pursuit” opens with a robbery at the Vivant Room nightclub, where a masked man and woman leave the bartender and a female customer dead, while night manager Helen Shane is missing. Within half an hour the pair kill the owner of a Korean deli 12 blocks away. A fired bouncer who had chased after Helen is ruled out, but he mentions she drove a gray Dodge, which the robbers apparently took.
A stolen Pontiac left near the club holds a store receipt, and the cashier recalls a thin young woman asking about organic apples. Helen’s car turns up uptown with her body in it, and fingerprints from both cars identify Leon Trapp, a robber who skipped parole. His friend Michael Mirvis, who lives near the organic market, denies seeing him. Trapp’s former girlfriend steers the detectives to his drug dealer, whose tip shows Trapp was hunting for a gun dealer, and then a $9.95 baby gift from the receipt turns up and exposes Mirvis’s lie.
Trapp and the woman are tracked to a nearby store, where Trapp takes a hostage and is shot dead. The woman pleads with officers to call her parents. She is Leslie Harlan, carjacked and kidnapped six months earlier in Connecticut by Trapp and his cousin, whom Trapp later killed in front of her. She says Trapp raped her and threatened to kill her family if she fled.
The Trial
McCoy charges Leslie with four counts of murder, and the prosecutors weigh the Patty Hearst comparison. Defense attorney Danielle Melnick claims duress. Dr. Elizabeth Olivet thinks Leslie enjoyed the crimes at times while sincerely believing she was forced. Her prints link her to a Bridgeport liquor store robbery where she fired a gun, and the judge admits it to rebut duress; Melnick spins it as Trapp forcing her to shoot so she would think of herself as a criminal.
McCoy uses Leslie’s expulsions and school troubles to undercut her mother’s testimony. Cross-examined, Leslie calls the bartender “Willy,” then admits she knew the Vivant Room from her clubbing days and may have mentioned it to Trapp. After a bitter fight with her mother, she rejects a first-degree manslaughter plea.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Leslie Harlan on all four counts of second-degree murder. The episode ends before sentencing, with her family preparing a bid for leniency.
Why it stands out
- Amanda Peet guest stars as Leslie Harlan.
- The prosecutors debate the parallel to Patty Hearst, noting she was convicted even though a jury accepted that she had been kidnapped.
- Leslie’s duress defense unravels over one detail: she knows the murdered bartender’s nickname.