Humiliation (Season 6, Episode 7)
Premise: A street prostitute is shot dead in a Hell’s Kitchen alley with $2,000 in her purse, and the evidence points to a married plastic surgeon who admits paying her for sex.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 7
- 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
- Clare Wren as Julia Danforth, Bob Dishy as defense attorney Lawrence “Larry” Weaver, Jonathan Walker as Dr. Mark Danforth, Allen Swift as Abe Pomerance
- Director
- Matthew Penn
- Writers
- Michael S. Chernuchin & Barry M. Schkolnick
Summary
The Investigation
“Humiliation” opens with the murder of Gwyn George, 25, a crack-using prostitute shot three times with a .22 in an alley off West 47th Street. Her purse still holds about $2,000, and her record includes an earlier attempt to blackmail a diplomat who had been a client. Her pimp, Roscoe Squire, steers the detectives to deli owner McCracken, who once chased her with a crowbar, but store video and a neighbor clear him.
Abe Pomerance, a neighborhood watcher, logs the plates of cars cruising the block, and one belongs to Dr. Mark Danforth, a plastic surgeon. Danforth first claims he stopped only for cigarettes, then admits paying for sex. His bank records show four $500 ATM withdrawals the week before, matching the cash in Gwyn’s purse, and he owns a Colt .22 that his wife, interior decorator Julia Danforth, cannot find. Julia says she took out the money to buy antiques. Danforth is arrested for murder.
The Trial
Defense attorney Lawrence Weaver calls the case circumstantial. Kincaid finds calls to Danforth’s office from the pay phone where Gwyn worked and learns from an antiques dealer that Julia spent only $1,200, but McCoy still sees little to try, so he tells her to prosecute it herself. On the stand Julia fumbles over where the rest went, and the jury convicts Danforth of second-degree murder.
Kincaid suspects Julia meant to be caught. Julia’s accounts of her own whereabouts that night do not agree, and a second, anonymous tip about Danforth’s car came from a woman at 10:30. With Weaver’s cooperation, McCoy and Kincaid stage a false development: a witness supposedly misjudged the time of the shots, which would clear Danforth and force a retrial. Julia then produces the missing Colt, saying she found it at her mother’s house in Mamaroneck, but detectives had been tracking her and she never went there.
Spoiler, the ending: Confronted in front of her husband, Julia lashes out at him and says she wanted him to hurt as badly as she did. Her lawyer later tells the prosecutors she will plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter.
Why it stands out
- Kincaid tries her first homicide case on her own after McCoy declines to take it.
- The prosecutors win a conviction and then work with the defense lawyer to undo it once they suspect the wrong spouse was convicted.
- Briscoe and Curtis argue over Danforth’s infidelity, with Curtis, a married father of three, taking the harder line.