Mad Dog (Season 7, Episode 18)
Premise: When a teenager is raped and smothered weeks after the serial rapist Lewis Darnell wins parole, McCoy becomes convinced Darnell did it and uses every legal tool to get him off the street.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 18
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Jamie Ross (Carey Lowell), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Burt Young as Lewis Darnell, Lisa LoCicero as Janeane Darnell, Ned Eisenberg as James Granick, David Fonteno as L. Munro, Carolyn McCormick as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet
- Director
- Christopher Misiano
- Writers
- René Balcer
Summary
The Investigation
“Mad Dog” begins at a parole hearing where McCoy, who convicted Lewis Darnell of six rapes 18 years earlier, opposes his release for the third time; the board frees him anyway. Six weeks later Teresa Perez, home sick from school, is found dead in her bed on the Lower East Side. The medical examiner finds signs of suffocation and evidence that she was raped as she died, and there is no sign of forced entry.
Teresa’s secret boyfriend has a solid alibi. The detectives find a pipe passage linking her basement to the unlocked building next door, and a lab technician finds the imprint of Teresa’s face on a plastic laundry bag. McCoy suspects Darnell despite a different pattern: Darnell took a long lunch that day, and records show he lived in the neighboring building as a small boy. A judge refuses a search warrant, so parole officer Munro orders a drug exam, which shows Darnell shaves his body hair. A search finds violent pornography, and when Darnell walks out of questioning he is arrested for violating parole.
The Trial
A judge frees Darnell on a writ of habeas corpus. McCoy then seeks to commit him under the mental hygiene law, over Dr. Olivet’s private objection that this punishes through psychiatry; on the stand she agrees he will keep raping and that there is no cure. Darnell’s daughter, Janeane, defends him, and McCoy confronts Darnell over his fantasies. Judge McLellan, noting that the Supreme Court is weighing the same issues in Kansas v. Hendricks, refuses commitment.
McCoy orders round-the-clock surveillance, repeated searches, wiretaps and grand jury subpoenas for Darnell’s co-workers, while community notification under Megan’s Law spreads his record. Darnell loses his job and no county will take him. A federal judge declines to stop McCoy but warns him. When a girl says Darnell tried to talk his way into her apartment, Ross doubts her story and Schiff forbids an arrest on it.
Spoiler, the ending: Soon afterward Darnell attacks a friend of his daughter’s with a knife and a plastic bag, and Janeane, walking in on the assault, kills him with a baseball bat.
Why it stands out
- This episode earned Sam Waterston an Emmy nomination for lead actor in a drama series.
- McCoy tries to civilly commit a sex offender while the U.S. Supreme Court case Kansas v. Hendricks is still pending, and the judge declines to get ahead of it.
- The case tests Megan’s Law-style community notification, which Darnell’s lawyer likens to a modern scarlet letter.