Death Penalty 24 Law & Order episodes
Capital cases and the fight over whether the state should seek execution.
- Season 2 · Episode 16
Vengeance
A young woman’s strangled body turns up on top of an elevator car, and the method matches two earlier unsolved killings.
- Season 6 · Episode 3
Savages
An undercover detective is shot dead, the killer turns out to be a respectable accountant, and the DA’s office must decide whether to seek New York’s newly restored death penalty.
- Season 6 · Episode 15
Encore
A jogger killed in Central Park proves to be Michael Dobson’s second wife, and years earlier the case over his first wife’s murder fell apart.
- Season 6 · Episode 23
Aftershock
After watching the execution of a killer they caught and convicted, Briscoe, Curtis, McCoy and Kincaid each spend a hard day off that ends in tragedy.
- Season 7 · Episode 1
Causa Mortis
A night-school teacher is killed in a carjacking, and a recording of her last minutes sets off fights over evidence, jurisdiction and the death penalty.
- Season 7 · Episode 17
Showtime
Eddie Newman’s murder trial becomes a media spectacle as his defense team builds a case against a Hollywood psychiatrist and Ross fights her ex-husband for custody of their daughter.
- Season 7 · Episode 23
Terminal
A gunman fires on guests leaving a charity cruise, and the governor takes the case away from DA Adam Schiff when he will not pursue a capital charge.
- Season 8 · Episode 19
Disappeared
A couple and their building’s developer vanish amid letters attacking gentrification, and the man who turns in his mentally ill brother watches him face the death penalty after refusing any psychiatric defense.
- Season 8 · Episode 21
Bad Girl
A young drifter who stabbed an off-duty police officer is sentenced to death, then refuses to appeal after a religious conversion, while Schiff faces a challenger backed by an old friend and Briscoe’s daughter Cathy is arrested on drug charges.
- Season 9 · Episode 2
DWB
The dragging death of a Black man is traced to white patrol officers, and McCoy fights both the U.S. Attorney and Schiff to prosecute the officer who bought immunity with his testimony.
- Season 9 · Episode 3
Bait
A suburban teenager’s lies about a shooting hide his work as an unregistered informant, and McCoy goes after the narcotics detective who ignored a warning that his snitch was about to be killed.
- Season 9 · Episode 5
Agony
The torture of a recently separated woman leads to a traveling serial killer who trades six bodies for a plea deal, before new evidence shows he may not be the man who attacked her.
- Season 9 · Episode 9
True North
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.
- Season 10 · Episode 5
Justice
The murder of a lawyer working on a death-row appeal suggests the wrong man was convicted, and McCoy finds Jamie Ross on the other side of the case.
- Season 10 · Episode 16
Trade This
The shooting of a junior broker uncovers a rigged internet stock, a staged harassment settlement and a mob family’s missing millions, and McCoy builds a death-penalty case with gangsters as his victims.
- Season 11 · Episode 12
Teenage Wasteland
A Chinese restaurant owner is beaten to death on a delivery to an empty apartment, and the case against five Queens teenagers forces DA Nora Lewin to weigh the death penalty for an 18-year-old.
- Season 13 · Episode 4
Tragedy on Rye
A struggling actress is found shot in her soundproofed apartment over a deli, and a tourist video of three men hauling away her TV becomes the centerpiece of a capital murder case that Branch insists on pursuing.
- Season 13 · Episode 17
Genius
The stabbing of a moonlighting cab driver who turns out to be a fugitive Klansman leads to a celebrated novelist’s protégé, an ex-convict writer who then offers to plead guilty only if the state puts him to death.
- Season 14 · Episode 1
Bodies
A teenager’s murder leads to a cab driver who boasts of many more victims, and when his Legal Aid lawyer refuses to reveal where the bodies are, McCoy puts the lawyer on trial.
- Season 17 · Episode 9
Deadlock
A mass murderer spared from execution escapes and kills again before his capture, and after McCoy fails to revive the death penalty, the father of a child victim shoots him.
- Season 18 · Episode 1
Called Home
Det. Cyrus Lupo returns from four years overseas when his brother dies of a lethal injection, and a second assisted suicide points to the daughter of a paroled right-to-die doctor.
- Season 18 · Episode 9
Executioner
A visiting doctor is beaten to death in a borrowed hotel room, and the intended target turns out to be a New York physician who quietly carries out executions in South Carolina.
- Season 19 · Episode 9
By Perjury
A plaintiff in a class action over a fatal airliner crash is shot after offering the airline a way out, and the trail leads to the families’ own lawyer, whom Cutter comes to believe has killed before to protect his payday.
- Season 20 · Episode 17
Four Cops Shot
Four police officers are gunned down in a pizzeria, and the shooter’s motive, along with a federal push for the death penalty, puts the dead officers’ own conduct under scrutiny.