Divorce (Season 8, Episode 16)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 8, Episode 16
- 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
- Jill Clayburgh as Sheila Atkins, Haviland Morris as Molly Kilpatrick, Tony Roberts as Paul Redfield, John Wojda as Gary Kilpatrick, Adam LeFevre as David Harrigan
- Director
- Constantine Makris
- Writers
- Barry M. Schkolnick
Summary
The Investigation
“Divorce” opens with a couple arriving for a counseling session at St. Anne’s Hospital and finding counselor Linda Burk stabbed to death in her office. A security supervisor admits he never really sent a guard to check on her when her husband called. A misprinted dry-cleaning cap leads Briscoe and Curtis to Leonard Gardner, a homeless man who believes he is a 16th-century pope and has been living on a closed floor of the hospital, but he was in a precinct holding cell when Burk died.
Gardner’s talk of a red-haired woman shouting at Burk sends the detectives to the Archdiocese, where Burk assessed marriages for annulment. Gary Kilpatrick wants his 16-year marriage annulled so he can remarry in the church, and his ex-wife, Molly, objects because the ruling would brand their son, Billy, illegitimate in the church’s eyes. Someone deleted Burk’s report on the couple and optimized her hard drive at 9:28 that night, though a technician recovers scraps describing Molly as unstable. Molly is a skilled bookkeeper who takes Prozac and Valium, and her alibi falls apart after a scene at Billy’s hockey practice. A pushy interrogation nearly gets a confession before her lawyer storms in, and McCoy scolds the detectives.
The Trial
Molly’s divorce lawyer, Sheila Atkins, insists that Gary hid assets with the help of his attorney, Paul Redfield. Gary’s alibi holds, Billy says his mother never answered her phone that night, and Molly is arrested. Atkins quietly floats a manslaughter plea and asks the Bar Association’s ethics committee about privilege. McCoy moves to compel her, and Judge Derrick rules that what Molly told her is not protected. Atkins first extracts a three-to-six sentence for Molly and a fraud inquiry into Redfield and Gary, then testifies that Molly vowed to kill Burk, while Molly sobs that she never said it.
The prosecutors then learn that Atkins had asked a judge to block the annulment and withdrew the petition two days after the murder, when only the killer could have known Burk’s report was gone. Redfield spots the same thing and uses it to force Atkins to drop her money demands. As she gives in, Briscoe and Curtis arrest her for murder.
Spoiler, the ending: In court, Atkins admits she begged Burk to delay the report, that they fought and she stabbed her with scissors, and that she lied about Molly. She pleads guilty to second-degree murder and is sentenced to 15 years to life. Redfield agrees to return the hidden assets and loses his law license for three years, and McCoy and Schiff wonder dryly where such lawyers learned their ethics.
Why it stands out
- Jill Clayburgh guest-stars as Sheila Atkins, a divorce lawyer who first appears to be the prosecution’s star witness.
- McCoy uses the attorney-client privilege rules to force a defense lawyer to testify against her own client, only to discover that the lawyer framed her.
- The case turns on a court petition: Atkins withdrew it before anyone else knew the annulment report had been erased.