Blood (Season 8, Episode 7)
Premise: 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.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 8, Episode 7
- 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
- Deborah Rush as Frances Houston, Stephen Mendillo as Joshua Burdett, Franchelle Stewart Dorn as defense attorney Ms. Joyner, Harry O’Reilly as Jerry O’Brien, Bellamy Young as Ellen O’Brien
- Director
- Jace Alexander
- Writers
- Story: René Balcer; Story & teleplay: Craig Tepper
Summary
The Investigation
“Blood” begins when Karin Burdett, wife of drug company president Josh Burdett, falls 18 floors from her balcony while he says he was at a pharmacy. She had sleeping pills in her system and a twisted wrist, and a medication she was taking shows she gave birth three weeks earlier. Burdett says they placed the baby for adoption because he wanted no more children. Her obstetrician says Karin regretted the decision and still had time to revoke it, and a dummy drop shows she must have been shoved.
A Trenton hospital and a car service lead to the adoptive parents, Jerry and Ellen O’Brien, and to the fact that the infant, Maggie, is part Black. Detectives assume Karin had an affair and question Morris Keach, a Black foundation executive she had asked about raising Black children, but he refuses a blood test. The baby has an inherited form of anemia, and the Burdetts’ medicine cabinet holds a folic acid prescription for Josh, who has the same condition. His ex-wife, Frances Houston, insists he is white, but Van Buren confronts him, and Burdett is arrested.
The Trial
Ellen O’Brien vanishes with the baby before a court-ordered paternity test. Burdett’s 1963 job application lists him as white, and a Black former protégé says Burdett sent him to Duluth after he mentioned a Black Burdett family in Knoxville. A $20,000 retainer to a discrimination lawyer suggests Burdett was preparing to reveal his race and reclaim the baby. Phone records show Houston wired $3,000 to Ellen O’Brien’s mother, and Jerry O’Brien admits Houston paid them to hide the child. Her prints are on the balcony, and Burdett admits he lied to protect his teenage son.
Houston’s lawyer, Ms. Joyner, argues she acted only to spare her son from racism, though the judge bars her social science experts. Burdett describes growing up passing as white in Tennessee, and Houston testifies that Karin went over the railing after a brief struggle. McCoy’s cross paints her as a bigot, and the jury deadlocks. Ross then finds sealed divorce drafts showing Houston fought not to have custody of the boy, but Burdett refuses to testify about them.
Spoiler, the ending: McCoy tells Houston that Burdett will authenticate the drafts at a retrial, and she pleads guilty to first-degree manslaughter for eight and a third to 25 years. McCoy later admits to Ross that the claim about Burdett testifying was a bluff.
Why it stands out
- The key forensic clue is medical: father and child share the same inherited anemia, which reveals that the pharmaceutical executive has Black ancestry.
- McCoy wins the plea with a bluff, telling the defendant her ex-husband will testify when he has refused to.
- In a personal subplot, Ross sets McCoy up on a date with a friend named Madeline, who reports that he talked about Claire Kincaid.