Terminal (Season 7, Episode 23)
Premise: A gunman fires on guests leaving a charity cruise, and the governor takes the case away from DA Adam Schiff when he will not pursue a capital charge.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 7, Episode 23
- 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
- Kent Williams as Hank Coburn, Roy Thinnes as Asst. Atty. Gen. Victor Panatti, Dani Klein as Susan Beckner, Jack Gilpin as Defense Attorney Mr. Axtell
- Director
- Constantine Makris
- Writers
- René Balcer & Ed Zuckerman
Summary
The Investigation
“Terminal” opens as a dinner cruise for a Jewish charity’s young leadership committee docks at a Manhattan pier and a gunman in a trench coat opens fire. One man is killed, three people are wounded, and graduate student Lorna Kaminsky drowns after falling off the pier in the panic. The setting suggests terrorism, and the detectives question Arab cab drivers who were at the pier, one of whom saw a man in a trench coat waiting in the garage.
The dead man carries business cards as Larry Rice but proves to be Todd Wexman, a Connecticut accountant with a wife, three children and a secret apartment. The bullet that killed him passed first through travel agent Susan Beckner, the real target. That afternoon she had sold 40 airline tickets to tour operator Hank Coburn, whose $32,000 check would have bounced if she had deposited it Monday morning. His girlfriend, Carolyne Trang, owns a Glock, her prints match partials on the shell casings, and once she learns Coburn is nearly broke she admits he borrowed it.
The Trial
Victor Panatti of the state Attorney General’s office presses for a death-penalty charge. McCoy and Ross build a first-degree theory: Coburn shot Beckner to keep her from depositing a bad check, turning the theft of the tickets into a robbery. Schiff, spending his days at Cedar’s Hospital after his wife’s stroke, calls the theory a stretch and tells the Attorney General he will seek only second-degree murder. The governor removes him, and the Attorney General names Panatti special prosecutor.
Ross joins Panatti’s trial team, while McCoy helps Schiff sue to be reinstated. Defense attorney Axtell shows that Coburn had always paid Beckner on time and that the agent who refused him an advance had made exceptions before. After clashing with Ross, Panatti takes over the questioning, and Axtell gets Schiff’s sworn statement, that the evidence of robbery was too thin, before the jury. Judge Barclay rules the governor’s order is beyond review.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury acquits Coburn of first-degree murder and convicts him of second-degree murder for the deaths of Wexman and Kaminsky, sparing him the death penalty. At the hospital, Schiff signs the form to take his wife off life support, and she dies.
Why it stands out
- Schiff’s wife suffers a severe stroke during the case and dies at the end of the episode after he consents to end life support.
- The governor uses his power under Executive Law 63 to replace an elected DA with a special prosecutor, and Schiff sues to get the case back.
- McCoy and Ross end up on opposite sides: she helps the special prosecutor try Coburn while he argues Schiff’s case against the governor.