Admissions (Season 9, Episode 22)
Premise: A math graduate student is found strangled behind her university library, and suspicion moves from a paroled rapist to her celebrated adviser before settling on two fellow students.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 9, Episode 22
- 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
- Miguel Sandoval as Dr. Miguel Clemente, Chris Gartin as Dennis Michaels, Kurt Deutsch as Peter Kelly, Maddie Corman as Melissa Slater, J. K. Simmons as Dr. Emil Skoda
- Director
- Jace Alexander
- Writers
- Story: William N. Fordes; Teleplay: Kathy McCormick; Story & teleplay: Lynne E. Litt
Summary
The Investigation
“Admissions” begins at Hudson University, where two students on their way to a campus nude run find the body of Sarah Kincaide, a master’s candidate in mathematics, behind the library. The campus murder first points to Eddie Clayman, a recently paroled rapist living nearby whose whereabouts that night are vague. But the medical examiner finds Sarah was strangled, cut afterward and nine weeks pregnant, and Dr. Emil Skoda reads the scarf over her face and the tentative knife wounds as the work of someone who knew her and staged the scene.
Sarah had told friends she was held up by her adviser, Dr. Miguel Clemente, shortly before she died, and her notes questioned his $4 million Kent Institute grant report. Clemente, the department’s star, refuses a DNA test and calls the suspicion racist. When a student, Bill Conway, says he saw Clemente storm into the library that night, Clemente is arrested, and he admits a five-month affair with Sarah that he ended.
The case then falls apart: a librarian places Clemente’s angry visit on the night before, an outside mathematician doubts Sarah’s critique, and DNA rules him out as the father. The lab points instead to a man of Greek descent with beta-thalassemia, and Sarah’s roommate, Melissa Slater, the dean’s daughter, reluctantly names her own fiancé, Dennis Michaels. Michaels admits one encounter with Sarah, and his friend Peter Kelly swears the two spent that night drinking together.
The Trial
Bar staff do not remember the pair, and a professor who saw a young man step briefly into the library stairwell around 11 p.m. picks Kelly out from a yearbook photo. Kelly still refuses to talk, so McCoy seeks a material witness order and then has both men arraigned for second-degree murder, with Kelly as an accomplice. Schiff points out that the accomplice charge cannot stand, since doing nothing is not a crime in New York.
McCoy then brings Kelly, Michaels and Kelly’s wealthy father into one room. When the father pulls the bail he posted, Kelly admits he went looking for Michaels, saw him with Sarah in the stairwell, assumed they were having sex and left. Michaels erupts, accusing Kelly of watching the whole thing.
Spoiler, the ending: Michaels agrees to plead guilty to second-degree murder for 20 years to life. Kelly cannot be charged for failing to act and is expelled. Clemente returns to campus, and Sarah’s father looks into a wrongful death suit.
Why it stands out
- The first suspect, Dr. Clemente, is arrested on one witness’s mistaken date and suspended from teaching before DNA clears him.
- Peter Kelly saw the attack and walked away, but Schiff notes New York has no law that makes that a crime.
- Dr. Skoda’s early read of the scene, that the killer knew the victim, turns out to be right.