I.D. (Season 7, Episode 2)
Premise: An unidentified woman is found shot in an office building elevator, and the prosecution is upended by a judge who turns on the DA’s office and by the question of who the victim really was.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 2
- 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
- Pamela Gray as Lucy Sullivan, Jerry Adler as Judge Nathan Marks, Gerry Bamman as Stan Gillum
- Director
- Constantine Makris
- Writers
- Ed Zuckerman
Summary
The Investigation
“I.D.” begins with a nude woman found shot behind the ear in a Midtown office elevator, with no purse or identification. Elevator system logs show two calls from the 18th floor in the middle of the night, pointing to a floor of short-term rented offices. A receptionist there remembers a visitor from the Midwest who phoned from the Barrington Hotel for directions, and the hotel’s guest list leads the detectives to Lucy Sullivan of Terre Haute, Indiana. She identifies the body as her sister Joanne, who had been staying in her room without registering.
A warrant shows Joanne was wanted in New Jersey as Joanne Dunbar. A state police lieutenant explains that she and her husband, blackjack dealer Billy Dunbar, cheated casinos, some tied to organized crime. Dunbar had rented the 18th-floor office under an alias to sell a butter-export scheme. In his empty apartment the detectives find a .25 pistol and a photo of Lucy hugging Dunbar, and the superintendent says a woman like her left early one morning. Her print matches one on the gun’s magazine, and she is arrested for her sister’s murder.
The Trial
Judge Nathan Marks, who remarks on Ross’s blouse in court, holds a hearing at the apartment, rules the search illegal, but admits the evidence against the defendant because she had no privacy claim there. Mid-trial, Dunbar’s body surfaces in the river, shot in the head. The defendant testifies that her sister was hiding from the people who killed him and offers a bus-tour receipt as an alibi for the morning she was seen at the apartment.
Ross flies to Terre Haute and returns with a former co-worker who will testify that the defendant is not Lucy Sullivan. The woman on trial is Joanne, who killed her sister to take her identity. Marks declares a mistrial and dismisses the charge. The appellate court orders a retrial, which goes back to Marks, who now suppresses everything from the apartment because a wife can expect privacy in her husband’s home, and has McCoy cuffed for contempt. Schiff confronts Marks in chambers with the administrative judge, who removes him and assigns Judge Bryant.
Spoiler, the ending: Joanne’s lawyer asks for a manslaughter plea, and she says she panicked after her husband disappeared, but McCoy refuses. The jury finds her guilty after about 20 minutes.
Why it stands out
- The defendant sits through her first trial under her dead sister’s name; the woman in the morgue is the real Lucy Sullivan.
- The appellate court allows a retrial despite double jeopardy because the mistrial grew out of the defendant’s own deception.
- McCoy is jailed for contempt mid-trial, and Schiff cites the judge’s remarks about Ross in pressing him to step aside.