Passion (Season 7, Episode 21)
Premise: A young book editor is found beaten to death inside a novelist’s loft, and suspicion turns to the novelist’s longtime companion, a lawyer who insists their relationship was intact.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 21
- 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
- Robert Foxworth as Professor Charles Evans, Sara Botsford as Diane Posner, John Coughlin as Timothy Stevens
- Director
- Constantine Makris
- Writers
- Story: Richard Sweren; Story & teleplay: Barry M. Schkolnick
Summary
The Investigation
“Passion” begins with a 911 call from a dying woman in a Beach Street loft shared by novelist and professor Charles Evans and his partner, attorney Diane Posner. The victim is Joni Timberman, an ambitious editor at East River Press, struck with a bronze sculpture later found in a dumpster. She had a key; Evans says he left it for her to collect his new manuscript while he was at a Faulkner symposium at Vassar, and Posner says she was alone at her country home in Croton all weekend.
Rival editor Timothy Stevens, whose authors Timberman had lured away, claims he saw Evans being intimate with her. Her gynecologist confirms she recently had an abortion, and Evans admits he was the father. Posner’s secretary recalls her suddenly giving away theater tickets, Evans turned up at the symposium unregistered, and E-ZPass records show Posner’s Volvo entering Manhattan on Sunday evening and leaving after 10 p.m. Timberman’s hair is found in the car, and Posner is charged with second-degree murder.
The Trial
Evans tells McCoy he ended the relationship with Posner the Friday before the killing. Posner refuses a manslaughter plea and says she was visiting her son Austin at his Connecticut boarding school. The boy backs her up, but his headmaster says she rarely visits, and McCoy learns she sent Austin away after Evans moved in.
Posner then attempts suicide in her cell at Rikers, leaving letters to Evans and to Austin. Citing People v. Garofolo, McCoy wins access to the unsealed letters, which hint that she is shielding Evans. Evans’s friend Peter Hilligan says Posner called him from Croton the night of the murder, and Posner tells McCoy that a drunken Evans took her car and came back with blood on his shirt. Evans is arrested. But a list of materials her secretary brought to the jail shows Posner had been reading about searches of prisoners’ mail, and McCoy concludes she staged the letters to point him away from the real killer.
Spoiler, the ending: Questioned again, Austin admits he took a bus to Croton, drove his mother’s car into the city to confront Evans, and struck Timberman when she found him in the loft and told him to leave. He pleads guilty to first-degree manslaughter and is sentenced to a minimum of 10 years.
Why it stands out
- Posner turns the law on the prosecutors, planting unsealed letters in her cell after reading the very precedent that would let McCoy seize them.
- McCoy relies on People v. Garofolo, which holds that a prisoner has no expectation of privacy in unsealed letters, to obtain Posner’s suicide notes.
- Electronic E-ZPass toll records are used to place Posner’s car in Manhattan on the night of the murder.