Under the Influence (Season 8, Episode 11)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 8, Episode 11
- 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
- Daniel McDonald as Bernard Dressler, Kathryn Meisle as Susan Young, Cliff Gorman as Judge Gary Feldman, David Garrison as defense attorney Richard Billings, Susan Pilar as Gabrielle Barra
- Director
- Adam Davidson
- Writers
- René Balcer
Summary
The Investigation
“Under the Influence” begins with a hit-and-run in East Harlem early on a Sunday: Peter LaValle, an Upper East Side man on his weekly walk, is struck at a crosswalk, and the same car then runs down Leon Galvez and his five-year-old son, Max. There are no skid marks. An anonymous $500 condolence letter to the boy’s mother mentions a detail only an eyewitness could know, and the new bills trace to Susan Young, whose seat-belt bruise suggests she rode in the passenger seat. She denies everything and leaves town.
Young’s phone records point to a boyfriend in Rio, executive Bernard Dressler, whom an airport guard remembers as loud and smelling of scotch when he landed that morning. Dressler owns a black 1992 Jaguar and has a prior DWI. His car looks clean, but a hidden fourth VIN tag shows it is a swapped vehicle; the original Jaguar, freshly repaired, turns up at an exporter’s lot awaiting shipment to Russia, and Dressler is arrested.
Held as a material witness, Young finally says Dressler, jealous and ranting, sped into LaValle and made no effort to avoid the Galvezes. Ross learns he once ran a red light in Massachusetts and left a girl on a bicycle in a coma, and that the suspension of his license there also bars him from driving in New York. Backed by Schiff, McCoy seeks a murder one indictment and offers second-degree murder.
The Trial
A flight attendant, Gabrielle Barra, tells McCoy she served Dressler fifteen drinks, which could defeat intent. McCoy keeps her statement from the defense, and Judge Gary Feldman, who plans to run against Schiff on a drunk-driving platform, backs him and blocks defense questions about intoxication. Ross warns McCoy that he could be disbarred and suspects he is avenging Claire Kincaid.
Dressler testifies that he blacked out after a dozen drinks and breaks down under McCoy’s cross. McCoy then puts Barra’s statement into evidence himself, establishing that Dressler was too drunk to think rationally and undercutting his own murder case.
Spoiler, the ending: Dressler pleads guilty to three counts of first-degree vehicular manslaughter for five to fifteen years. Feldman threatens McCoy with the ethics committee, but McCoy says he will report the judge’s own conduct, and Feldman accepts the plea and uses the sentencing to attack the statute.
Why it stands out
- The episode revisits the drunk-driving crash that killed ADA Claire Kincaid in Season 6’s “Aftershock”; Briscoe, who was in the car, tells Ross about it.
- The break in the case comes from a hidden fourth VIN tag that shows Dressler’s Jaguar was swapped for an identical model.
- McCoy wins his plea by introducing the very evidence he had been withholding, which destroys his own murder theory.