Punk (Season 9, Episode 8)
Premise: A corrections officer is executed in a Manhattan playground, and the case leads to a women’s prison, where an inmate Carmichael once sent away says the guard had been raping her.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 9, Episode 8
- 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
- Cara Buono as Alice Simonelli, Tovah Feldshuh as defense attorney Danielle Melnick, James Colby as Corrections Officer Atwood, Jacinto Taras Riddick as Luis Pacheco, Karina Arroyave as Candy Pacheco
- Director
- Matthew Penn
- Writers
- Story: Richard Sweren; Teleplay: Matt Witten
Summary
The Investigation
“Punk” starts with the corrections officer murder of Charles “Charlie” Tyner, shot twice in a Manhattan playground after a night out with his son, a Columbia football player. Tyner, praised for heroics at Greene Correctional before moving to the women’s prison at Pine Hills, was apparently forced to kneel before the fatal shot. Suspicion falls on parolee Ricky Crimmins, whom Tyner often wrote up. Crimmins claims he had his wife, Trina Fleming, seduce the guard, then used the affair to force Tyner to smuggle drugs for him.
Fleming says Tyner later asked her for cocaine. At Pine Hills, records show Tyner pulled the file of inmate Alice Simonelli, who chose solitary over a drug test. Carmichael prosecuted Simonelli, a former student teacher, on a 1995 cocaine charge after she refused to name the man she drove to a deal, and she has since joined the Paganos gang in prison. Her parents reveal that they paid $500 to a fake paralegal, Luis Pacheco, whose pistol matches the killing. Pacheco’s sister Candy, also an inmate, says Simonelli wanted to reach her brother for a favor.
The Trial
Charged with first-degree murder, Simonelli accuses Carmichael of a grudge and hires Danielle Melnick. During intake at Rikers, she is hospitalized and found to have miscarried, and Melnick says Tyner raped her for months. A guard named Atwood admits that, at Tyner’s request, he handed Simonelli’s four-year-old daughter a condom in a park to scare her mother into silence. A judge suppresses Pacheco’s gun and frees him, and Simonelli turns down a manslaughter plea with the minimum term, while Carmichael insists she is a manipulator.
At trial, Candy Pacheco testifies under immunity about guards’ power over inmates, and Atwood describes widespread sex between officers and prisoners. Simonelli testifies that Tyner wore her down with write-ups, lost visits and threats of a transfer far from her daughter, and that she had Pacheco kill him after the threat to the child. Carmichael cross-examines her about favors from Tyner, and Simonelli asks whether the prosecutor has ever been raped.
Spoiler, the ending: After three days the jury is split. McCoy sends his evidence about Pine Hills to the Westchester County DA, and Simonelli agrees to plead to attempted first-degree manslaughter, three to six years concurrent with her drug sentence, naming Pacheco’s gun source instead of testifying, as long as she is not moved to Albion. Afterward, Carmichael reveals that she was raped on a date as a college freshman and never told anyone.
Why it stands out
- The case brings a confrontation with defense attorney Danielle Melnick, played by recurring guest Tovah Feldshuh.
- Melnick points out that under New York law an inmate cannot legally consent to sex with a guard.
- The final scene adds personal history for Carmichael, who reveals a rape from her own college years.