Angel (Season 6, Episode 8)
Premise: Leah Coleman reports that her eight-month-old daughter was taken from her carriage while she was at confession, but a walk back through her morning with Curtis ends in a confession of a different kind.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 6, Episode 8
- 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
- Elizabeth Connors as Leah Coleman, Fisher Stevens as defense attorney Ross Fineman, Michael Willis as Father Carney, Carolyn McCormick as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet
- Ripped from the headlines
- Based on the Susan Smith case.
- Director
- Arthur W. Forney
- Writers
- Michael S. Chernuchin & Janis Diamond
Summary
The Investigation
“Angel” opens in a church, where Leah Coleman comes out of confession with Father Carney to find her baby daughter, Rachel, missing from her carriage. Leah then recalls a young Puerto Rican man seated at the rear of the church, and Briscoe and Curtis follow that lead through a grocer’s tip and a lineup, while also questioning Leah’s estranged husband, Keith. A news conference arranged by the priest floods the squad with useless calls, and a landlady’s tip about a single neighbor buying diapers goes nowhere.
The detectives notice that witnesses saw the carriage but nobody mentions seeing the baby in it. Curtis asks to walk Leah through her morning: the playground, the market and, finally, the church. As they talk about faith and confession, Curtis says the child should have a Christian burial. Leah tells him she smothered Rachel with a pillow, then leads him to the furnace in her building’s basement.
The Trial
Legal Aid lawyer Ross Fineman, handling his first homicide, argues the church visit was an interrogation without Miranda warnings, but the judge admits the confession. Fineman asks no questions of the prosecution’s witnesses, including an examiner who matches hairs in a wool cap from the furnace to Rachel’s crib. His opening tells the jury that God wanted the death; the judge orders it disregarded, and Fineman then wins a late change of plea to insanity by warning that his own errors would hand Leah an appeal.
Dr. Olivet finds Leah legally sane, and McCoy rejects Kincaid’s view that a jury will need a reason. Father Carney testifies that he once calmed a distraught Leah by saying Susan Smith’s children were with God, and McCoy presses him on free will. Leah testifies that she wanted to spare Rachel a violent world, and under McCoy’s questioning she admits Rachel was screaming as she did it.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Leah Coleman of second-degree murder. Afterward Kincaid tells McCoy he was hard on the priest, and he credits his Jesuit upbringing.
Why it stands out
- The episode is based on the Susan Smith case, which also comes up in the priest’s testimony.
- Fineman turns his own inexperience into leverage, threatening an ineffective-assistance appeal unless the judge allows a late insanity plea.
- McCoy cross-examines a priest about free will and evil, and Dr. Olivet and Kincaid challenge his view that some people are simply bad.