Nullification (Season 8, Episode 5)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 8, Episode 5
- 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
- Denis O’Hare as Phil Christie, Betsy Aidem as Kay Brant, Gerry Becker as Thomas Robbins, Timothy Kirkpatrick as Greg Kubie, Walt MacPherson as Shelby
- Ripped from the headlines
- Real events behind the story include the standoffs at Ruby Ridge and Waco, the Oklahoma City bombing and the Chicago Seven trial.
- Director
- Constantine Makris
- Writers
- David Black
Summary
The Investigation
“Nullification” opens with an armored car robbery outside a New York Bets office that leaves guard Walter Wells and one robber dead, a second robber in a coma and a third, in a bright red windbreaker, missing. The dead robber, Matthew Brant, was a history teacher and veteran from Hastings; the wounded one, Greg Kubie, is a Hastings police officer. Both have the same new eagle tattoo with a Latin motto, and their submachine guns had been converted to fully automatic fire.
A tattoo parlor’s check leads to more local men, and an online search for the design turns up the website of a militia, the New Sons of Liberty, with instructions for converting guns the way the robbers did. With a warrant, the detectives get the group’s membership list, and dawn raids uncover a large stash of automatic weapons. Members, including Brant’s teenage son and Brant’s brother-in-law, Phil Christie, answer only with name, rank and serial number. Ballistics matches homemade gunpowder from Christie’s basement to the robbery, though the murder weapon is never found.
The Trial
McCoy charges the members with murder, conspiracy and attempted grand larceny. Christie, the group’s second in command, acts as his own lawyer and asks to be treated as a prisoner of war, which the judge refuses. He is removed from court for reciting the Declaration of Independence over testimony. Kay Brant, Matthew’s widow and Christie’s sister, testifies that her husband told her of the planned robbery; in return, McCoy agrees to try her son separately on lesser charges.
A juror is dismissed for telling another that some jurors plan to acquit to send a message. McCoy is handed old police files that could remove another juror and refuses to use them. On the stand, Christie cites an article on jury nullification that McCoy wrote about 25 years earlier, then invokes the Fifth Amendment when asked if he was the third robber. In closing, he urges the jurors to tell the state no.
Spoiler, the ending: After nine days and 40 ballots, the jury reports it cannot reach a verdict, and the judge declares a mistrial. As the militia members celebrate, McCoy tells Christie he will be back in court for a retrial in a couple of months.
Why it stands out
- Christie turns McCoy’s own early writing on jury nullification against him on the witness stand.
- Schiff reminds McCoy that he once defended antiwar protesters who poured blood on draft board records.