Law & Order Season 8 Episode Guide
Plot summaries for the eighth season of Law & Order, which aired on NBC from September 1997 to May 1998, featuring Det. Lennie Briscoe, Det. Rey Curtis, Lt. Anita Van Buren, Executive ADA Jack McCoy, ADA Jamie Ross and DA Adam Schiff.
- 1
Thrill
A young delivery driver is gunned down on a bogus late-night order, and the two young men who killed him for kicks each insist the other one fired.
- 2
Denial
Blood in a cheap hotel room leads to two college sweethearts who deny their newborn son ever lived, until his body is found in the middle of their trial.
- 3
Navy Blues
A Navy chief found shot in a Manhattan park turns out to have been involved with his pilot, a celebrated female aviator whose account of an accidental shooting keeps shifting.
- 4
Harvest
A young mother shot during a random street encounter dies on the operating table, and the case widens from the gunman to the transplant surgeon who took her organs.
- 5
Nullification
A botched armored car robbery leads to a suburban militia whose leader acts as his own lawyer and asks the jury to set the law aside.
- 6
Baby, It's You
A 14-year-old fashion model dies of an infection caused by an untreated rape, and her wealthy parents’ combative lawyer fights the police while the case reaches back to Baltimore.
- 7
Blood
A drug executive’s young wife falls from their balcony weeks after giving up a baby who turns out to be part Black, exposing her husband’s lifelong secret and his ex-wife’s fears.
- 8
Shadow
A bail bondsman’s murder exposes a lawyer selling fixed cases, and a secret sham prosecution meant to find his inside man leads to one of Jamie Ross’s colleagues.
- 9
Burned
A stray confession on an answering machine reopens a fatal fire blamed on a drunk father and points to his teenage son, whose powerful grandfather is an old friend of Adam Schiff.
- 10
Ritual
An Egyptian importer’s killing first looks like terrorism, then reveals a family plan to have his 11-year-old grandniece cut by a doctor flown in from Cairo, and her father is the killer.
- 11
Under the Influence
A speeding car kills an elderly man and a father and his young son on an East Harlem street, and the trail leads to a wealthy executive who had been drinking heavily on a flight home from Rio.
- 12
Expert
Gunfire in a restaurant men’s room kills a diner and wounds a psychologist famous for testifying that killers were in a dissociative trance, and the suspect turns his own defense against him.
- 13
Castoff
A beloved Harlem social worker is shot dead outside her community center, and her secret life in the S&M scene leads to a former kept man killing wealthy past partners across the country.
- 14
Grief
An orderly left for dead in Riverside Park was beaten by brothers who say he raped their sister, and the case leads to a pregnant coma patient and a mother who kept a terrible secret.
- 15
Faccia a Faccia
A Mafia hit man turned federal witness is found shot in Central Park, and the prosecution of the aging boss blamed for it is threatened by a dementia claim and a confession that does not hold up.
- 16
Divorce
A hospital marriage counselor who evaluates Catholic annulments is stabbed in her office, and suspicion falls on an anxious ex-wife fighting her husband’s annulment while their divorce lawyers keep feuding.
- 17
Carrier
The accidental shooting of a teenage girl at a party leads detectives to a young man accused of deliberately infecting girls with HIV, and McCoy pushes a case that tests medical privacy.
- 18
Stalker
A nurse tormented by an anonymous e-mail stalker is dismissed as a fake after a fall down her stairs, and when she is murdered, the case divides Briscoe and Curtis on the witness stand.
- 19
Disappeared
A couple and their building’s developer vanish amid letters attacking gentrification, and the man who turns in his mentally ill brother watches him face the death penalty after refusing any psychiatric defense.
- 20
Burden
The death of a 12-year-old quadriplegic boy puts his strained family under suspicion until the trail leads to his doctor, who defends the killing as an act of mercy.
- 21
Bad Girl
A young drifter who stabbed an off-duty police officer is sentenced to death, then refuses to appeal after a religious conversion, while Schiff faces a challenger backed by an old friend and Briscoe’s daughter Cathy is arrested on drug charges.
- 22
Damaged
A schoolyard shootout that wounds a teacher exposes three popular boys who had sex with a mentally disabled classmate, while Briscoe’s daughter Cathy testifies against the dealer she supplied.
- 23
Tabloid
A law professor married into a famous family dies running from a gossip columnist into traffic, and when the columnist is later shot, her husband admits the killing and blames the tabloid press.
- 24
Monster
Pressed by Schiff before a primary election, detectives extract a confession from a known pedophile in the rape of a 10-year-old girl, only to find the real attacker works in her building.