True North (Season 9, Episode 9)
Premise: A software executive and his young daughter are shot in their townhouse, and suspicion turns to his Canadian wife, whose escape across the border sets off a standoff with Canada over the death penalty.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 9, Episode 9
- 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
- Bellamy Young as Stephanie Harker, David Mogentale as Gerard Petoskey, Tara Bast as Wendy Naughton, Robert Harper as John St. John, Phillip Clark as Pete Barnett
- Director
- Arthur W. Forney
- Writers
- Ed Zuckerman
Summary
The Investigation
“True North” opens with a double murder at the Manhattan townhouse of software executive Ronald Harker, shot dead along with his young daughter, Caitlin. A neighbor saw a woman he took for Harker’s wife, Stephanie, go inside moments before the shots, but Stephanie was at her book group. A strip of navy fabric on the fence points to her friend Doris Nichols, and a cab driver who glimpsed a gun in Nichols’s purse helps track her to the restaurant, where Nichols lies shot dead. Stephanie says Nichols confessed to killing Ron, attacked her and was shot in the struggle.
Divorce lawyer Pat Sinclair says Ron was leaving Stephanie, a former receptionist from Niagara Falls, Ontario, over drugs and affairs, and that she answered with a forged attempt to withdraw $2 million. Book-group friends note she stayed late and sober and took a call that supposedly went silent. The tissue under Nichols’s nails proves to be her own, and phone records show Nichols spoke to the restaurant for 11 minutes. Stephanie flees to Ontario and is arrested after using an ATM there, and her Canadian account sent Nichols $50,000 two weeks before the killings.
The Trial
Canada will return Stephanie only if death is ruled out, and Schiff tells McCoy to agree. Facing a cocaine charge, dealer Gerard Petoskey admits he supplied her the .38 used in the killings. Her friend Wendy Naughton then leads the detectives to Pete Barnett, a used-car dealer who lent Stephanie a red Ford Escort that came back smashed around the time Ron’s first wife, Rhonda, was killed by a hit-and-run driver in Buffalo. McCoy files notice to seek death, Canada withholds the evidence, and the bank produces the transfer only after McCoy threatens to search its Manhattan branch.
Petoskey and Naughton describe Stephanie’s drug use, affairs and pursuit of rich men. Stephanie testifies that the $50,000 was for Nichols’s rehab and that Nichols must have taken the gun from her home. Under McCoy’s cross-examination about her childhood and her husband’s circle, she loses her composure and declares herself smarter than all of them.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury convicts Stephanie of three counts of first-degree murder. In the penalty phase she admits all four killings, including Rhonda Harker’s, and begs to be spared, but the jury sentences her to death. Afterward, the DA’s office receives hundreds of calls from Canada, nearly all opposed to the execution.
Why it stands out
- Canada’s objection to the death penalty drives the extradition fight.
- McCoy breaks his word to Canada once he links Stephanie to the first Mrs. Harker’s death, and Schiff reminds him the death penalty is not mandatory.
- Stephanie Harker confesses to four killings only at the penalty phase, after she has already been convicted.