Past Imperfect (Season 7, Episode 22)
Premise: A former supermodel is found dead before her own surprise birthday party, and a DNA clue points investigators toward a blood relative.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 22
- 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
- René Augesen as Sonja Harlann, Paul Lieber as Jimmy Burke, Bray Poor as Grant Silverman, David McCallum as Craig Holland, Katherine Borowitz as defense attorney Marjorie Larson
- Director
- Christopher Misiano
- Writers
- Janis Diamond
Summary
The Investigation
“Past Imperfect” opens as neighbor Craig Holland, waiting to surprise his friend Christine Sandler with a birthday dinner, finds the onetime supermodel dead in her apartment beside a bloodied table. Holland mentions her epilepsy, yet the M.E. finds no signs of a seizure, only bruises on her upper arms, and a type O bloodstain differs from her type B. Sandler, who had overcome a cocaine habit, had just landed a deal as the face of a skin cream line called New Beginnings.
Her ex-husband, faded rock bassist Jimmy Burke, was two hours late to a recording session that day and says he had been receiving her money through their son, Douglas. Burke’s blood does not match, but the lab finds that the two samples come from relatives, and suspicion moves to Douglas, who often argued with his mother. A $2,500 check made out to cash, which Sandler told her bookkeeper went to an old family friend, leads the detectives to bank teller Sonja Harlann, who also visited Sandler’s mother, Mrs. Sandinsky, in a New Jersey nursing home.
Harlann says she is the daughter Sandler gave up for adoption at 18. Bank cameras show her leaving work around the time of the killing and returning in a different blouse with a purse like Sandler’s, which she passes to loan officer Grant Silverman, her boyfriend. Harlann is arrested, and Silverman tells police the bag held her blood-soaked blouse.
The Trial
Silverman turns out to be a lawyer who let his bar dues lapse, and the judge rules his talks with Harlann privileged. Her papers show Silverman wrote to St. Marks Hospital about tissue from the late Harold Lancer, a wealthy man Sandler had named as Harlann’s father. Lancer’s will left money to his unnamed “children,” and a paternity claim needed an affidavit from the mother. Harlann testifies that Sandler backed her claim, and McCoy accuses her of killing her mother when she refused to sign.
McCoy then threatens Silverman with a murder charge as her accomplice, which would end the privilege, and offers him a misdemeanor plea for his testimony. Silverman accepts and describes Harlann’s fury, leaving her lawyer, Marjorie Larson, little room to maneuver.
Spoiler, the ending: Harlann takes a plea to first-degree manslaughter with a sentence of 12½ to 25 years. In her allocution she says Sandler refused to sign because she had been a teenage call girl when Lancer fathered the child and feared her son would learn of it. A paternity test confirms Harlann is Lancer’s daughter, so she still collects her share, and McCoy sends Douglas the allocution to support a wrongful death suit.
Why it stands out
- The defense shields the key witness behind attorney-client privilege, even though Silverman was working as a bank loan officer and had let his bar dues lapse.
- Blood typing shows the killer is related to the victim, sending the detectives first to her son before a daughter given up for adoption emerges.
- McCoy breaks the privilege by threatening to charge the lawyer as an accomplice, since a lawyer who joins a client’s crime loses the protection.