Juvenile (Season 9, Episode 18)
Premise: The shooting of a star newspaper columnist leads back to the 1978 death of a Broadway actress, a mobster wrongly imprisoned for it, and a killer who was a juvenile at the time.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 9, Episode 18
- Detectives
- Det. Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach), Det. Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), ADA Abbie Carmichael (Angie Harmon), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Marsha Dietlein as Nicole Hampton, Matthew Bennett as Andrew Hampton, Frank Vincent as John Franchetta, Julian Gamble as Gerald Fox, Bob Dishy as defense attorney Larry Weaver
- Director
- Lewis H. Gould
- Writers
- Richard Sweren & Lynne Litt
Summary
The Investigation
“Juvenile” begins with the shooting of Ledger columnist Gerald Fox on his doorstep as he waits for his car service. Fox survives, and the detectives first chase his recent story about a grandmother moving cash for the Def 44 Crew drug gang, until narcotics officers and a street captain reveal that the grandmother does not exist. Searching Fox’s past, they find John Franchetta, a mob figure just paroled after about 20 years for pushing his girlfriend, Broadway actress Rebecca Hampton, out of her Central Park West window. Fox’s coverage of that trial made his name.
Franchetta has a girlfriend’s alibi, and phone records later confirm he was on a collect call during the shooting. A doorman says Fox invented the anonymous tip that put Franchetta in the building. From his hospital bed Fox admits that Franchetta had been pressing him to clear his name and that he had made calls on it, including to Rebecca’s mother. Schiff has the old case reviewed over the objections of its original prosecutor.
Suspicion shifts to Rebecca’s children. Fox’s driver picks Andrew Hampton out of a lineup, and the .25 used on Fox was stolen in 1978 from a club manager who dated Nicole Hampton. Old police logs show Andrew entering the building alone that day, contradicting the school alibi he and Nicole gave. Andrew is charged with attempted murder of Fox, and Nicole with her mother’s murder.
The Trial
Nicole was 15 in 1978, and under the law then in force, an adult court cannot try her. In family court her lawyer, Larry Weaver, argues the best the People could get is a delinquency finding. McCoy asks the judge to apply the current juvenile offender law, but the judge refuses and dismisses the case, and the press descends.
Franchetta, cleared, threatens to sue. Pressed with a possible rape charge, he says he and Nicole had a sexual relationship, and her letters to him in prison show she was devoted to him and that Andrew lied at the trial about a gun. McCoy charges Andrew with murder as her accomplice, then offers a way out if he gives up his sister. Confronted with the letters, Andrew turns on Nicole.
Spoiler, the ending: Andrew says Nicole told him when Fox left for work and pushed him to shoot. The murder charge against him is dropped and he pleads to attempted first-degree manslaughter for six to 12 years, while Nicole is arrested for the attempted murder of Fox. Carmichael doubts a jury will convict her, and a closing title card says Andrew is serving his term at Clinton Correctional Facility and Nicole was acquitted of the shooting.
Why it stands out
- Andrew and Nicole Hampton are played by real-life spouses Matthew Bennett and Marsha Dietlein.
- A change in New York law after 1978 means the killer cannot be tried as an adult for a murder committed at 15.
- The episode ends with on-screen text about the outcome, a device last used in Season 7’s “Barter” and Season 1’s “The Violence of Summer.”