Law & Order Episode, Seaon 7: Past Imperfect

"Law & Order" was a crime drama series originally broadcast on NBC from 1990 until 2010. This episode always intrigued me. I've had lots of dealings with lawyers over the years, because of work, and one of those attorneys had a dry, but funny way of saying things, although at times the dry remarks were skewering to others, and this episode always makes me think of him. Whether he's ever seen this episode, I have no idea, but I can imagine him chuckling a little about the last scene in this episode. Many of the episodes of this great series required viewers to pay attention, because there could be twists and turns in the plot and this episode is no exception. 

Main cast for this episode:

Sam Waterston: Executive Assistant District Attorney  Jack McCoy
Steven Hill: District Attorney Adam Schiff
Carey Lowell: Assistant District Attorney Jamie Ross
S. Epatha Merkerson: Lieutenant Anita Van Buren
Jerry Orbach: Detective Lennie Briscoe
Benjamin Bratt: Detective Rey Curtis
René Augesen: Sonja Harlan
Bray Poor: Grant Silverman
David McCallum: Craig Holland
Adam Kaufman: Douglas Burke
Katherine Borowitz: Defense Attorney Marjorie Larson
Kitty Chen: Judge Elizabeth Yee

A birthday party put together by Craig Holland for friend and neighbor Chrissy Sandler turns ugly when Holland finds Chrissy dead in her apartment. The dead woman's son, Douglas, shows up for the party, but he becomes a suspect, as he has had a somewhat rocky relationship with his mother and tests confirm some blood found in Chrissy's apartment is from a blood relative. The medical examiner also finds evidence of violence on the body and the police begin to question people about Chrissy's death. The dead woman is a former model who had had drug problems in the past, and when the police go over her financial records, they find a check for $2500 made out to "cash," with an illegible endorsement signature and no forms of identification noted by the bank teller who cashed the check. This takes the police to the bank where the check was cashed. The bank teller, Sonja Harlan, receives praise from her superior, but also a scolding for not having noted the identification used to cash the check. She claims she must have seen identification, but that she simply forgot to write it down. The police are essentially satisfied and they decide to head over into New Jersey to see Chrissy's mother, who is in a nursing home there and suffering with Alzheimer disease. The elderly lady has good days and bad days, but during her talk, she mentions that her daughter came to visit her fairly recently, although the nurse doesn't believe it to be accurate. So Briscoe and Curtis ask to see the sign in log for visitors. They find a visit to the lady from Sonja Harlan, the bank teller!

The police return to New York City and stop Ms. Harlan as she leaves work. They want to know why she would visit an elderly woman in a nursing home. After some back and forth with the police, she tells them, "She's my mother." Harlan tells the police she didn't disclose the information about her mother, because her mother had given birth to her out of wedlock, and that she (the mother) gave her up for adoption when her mother was 18; "It's not something she was proud of." All of this prompts the police to check on Harlan's movements on the day Chrissy was killed. The bank cameras show Sonja leaving for lunch wearing a white blouse, but then returning later wearing a different blouse and carrying a purse, which she hands off to Grant Silverman, the bank loan officer, and as Lennie Briscoe puts it about Silverman's relationship to Ms. Harlan, "The rumor around the coffee machine is, he's been stamping her bank book for the past few months." (They came up with some clever lines in this series... hahaha) Another video shows Silverman leaving the bank with the purse a little later, and the police theorize that it contains Sonja's white blouse, with her mother's blood on it. Chrissy's neighbor Craig Holland tells the police Chrissy had a purse like the one Ms. Harlan appears with in the bank video, and that the purse is missing from Chrissie's apartment. After obtaining a search warrant for Harlan's apartment (a judge refuses to grant a search warrant for Silverman's home), the police find one of the mother's blouses in Harlan's closet. They arrest Sonja Harlan and take Grant Silverman in for questioning. Silverman tells the police Sonja told him the purse had gym clothes in it. Down the hall, Harlan is under questioning, and she tells the police her mother gave her the purse. Then, when she struggles with her answers, she asks for her lawyer. When the police ask for her attorney's number, she tells them, "You've got him down the hall." In the meantime, Silverman, feeling the pressure, admits that he looked in the purse and that it contained a blouse covered in blood, and that Sonja told him her mother had an accident. When the police questioning Harlan leave her and go to Silverman to ask if he's Sonja's attorney, he says he "represents" Harlan. Sonja Harlan hires a top defense attorney, Marjorie Larson, and she moves to invoke attorney-client privilege regarding Silverman's statement about the blood covered blouse and anything Harlan had told him about what happened to her mother. Judge Yee, the trial judge, agrees and Silverman's testimony is out.*

The police go through Harlan's records from the search of her home and they find that she and Silverman had been checking into the fairly recent death of a wealthy man, Harold Lancer, who was worth $250 million when he died at an area hospital. They also find that Silverman did indeed act as Sonja's attorney, as he wrote the hospital where Harold Lancer died from cancer about Lancer's tissue biopsy. Jamie Ross goes to the hospital where she finds out that the hospital kept a tissue sample from Harold Lancer for cancer research and that Silverman had been in contact with the hospital about that tissue sample. It turns out, Chrissy had told Sonja that she was Harold Lancer's "love child." Then Silverman contacted the law firm representing Lancer's estate about getting Lancer's tissue sample tested, as Lancer had been cremated, and this was now the only means to see if Lancer was Sonja's father. Lancer's will named his heirs as his "wife and his children," but it didn't specify the children by name.** Silverman told the lawyers representing Lancer's estate that if a paternity test proved that Harold Lancer was Sonja's father, that Sonja would pursue a case for a full share of Lancer's estate. The thing is, Sonja needed her mother's cooperation to attest that Lancer was the father to establish a basis for the paternity test. Jack McCoy decides to go to trial with the evidence they have.

At the trial, the main attorney for the Lancer estate testifies about Silverman's contact with him, and about how Harlan, if proven to be Lancer's child, would be entitled to $53 million, as a valid claimant to the estate. Sonja Harlan takes the stand and testifies how it was much easier to trace who her mother was (she and Silverman found a birth record), and then once she found her mother, her mother told Harlan who her father was. Harlan tells the court that her mother was the one who suggested that Sonja pursue legal action to claim part of Lancer's estate, and that this would be a partial remedy for her life in foster homes and "all I've been through." She also testifies that her mother knew she had to sign papers saying that Lancer was Sonja's father, but that her mother wanted to first break the news to her son, but that her mother would have signed the papers if "someone hadn't killed her." McCoy points out that Mr. Silverman likely told Sonja that there was a kind of time limit for her to succeed in her claim, because once the will had gone through probate and the estate had been divided among Lancer's family, it would be extremely difficult for Harlan to make a claim. McCoy presses her as to why her mother hadn't signed the papers after a couple of weeks had passed. Sonja again says that her mother wanted to tell her son about everything first, and that the whole thing was up to her mother. McCoy then asks her if she was willing to walk away from $53 million, and she answers by noting that Silverman, as her attorney, would get a third of the money, and that she would have given her mother some of the money. McCoy theorizes that her mother wanted more money than Sonja was willing to pay her, so she wouldn't sign the paper and that Harlan became angry and killed her mother. Sonja replies that her mother loved her, but McCoy says that wasn't true, that her mother saw Sonja as an accident, and that she only really loved her son (he was the son by her former husband, a rock band star).

During discussions of the case at the DA's office, Jack McCoy decides to try to get Silverman to break over by challenging the "attorney-client privilege" ruling, by asserting that Silverman was an accomplice to his client, Sonja Harlan. McCoy has Silverman arrested and he then meets with Silverman and his lawyer. He lays out the case that Silverman knew Sonja was going to make her mother sign the papers one way or another, but that he did nothing to intercede to prevent violence, and then, once the mother was dead, he helped to dispose of evidence (the bloody blouse). McCoy says it's at least attempted grand larceny. Then McCoy lays out the benefit to Silverman if he testifies that he helped dispose of evidence and also testifies to what Harlan had told him about her mother's death ... that based on the DA's theory of the case, Harold Lancer was Sonja Harlan's father. If Harlan is convicted based on that theory, New York State will accept that as true, which will provide the basis for the paternity test, and if the test proves Lancer was her father, Harlan will get $53 million, with Silverman getting $17 million of that amount. McCoy says further, he would accept a plea of misdemeanor attempted grand larceny and recommend five years probation for Silverman. As Silverman consults with his lawyer, Jamie tells McCoy that he's buying Silverman's testimony, to which McCoy answers, "I just motivated him to tell the truth." Silverman accepts the offer and tells MCoy that Sonja's mother didn't know how she was "when she doesn't get her way...She had so much hate inside her. Her mother should have just signed the damn papers."

McCoy and Jamie meet with Harlan and Marjorie Larson. Larson tries arguing that everything Silverman has now admitted is still privileged, but McCoy answers that Silverman stopped being her attorney once he helped Harlan destroy evidence and he alludes to Judge Yee agreeing with him. He offers 12 1/2 to 25 years as the sentence, and it is accepted by Harlan. She then tells them her mother wouldn't sign the papers, because she admitted that she was a call girl when she got pregnant by Lancer. Her mother was afraid everyone would find out, especially her son, and that even the possibility of all that money wouldn't change her mind. Sonja implies how frustrating it all was, that her mother told her about her father and all of that money, but then she wouldn't help her get the money. Then she says how it was her mother's birthday and the party her neighbor was having, but her mother wanted her (Sonja) to leave, but that her son was invited to the party, "that's who she wanted, him, not me ... That bitch," she calls her mother. Even her attorney cringes.

In the final scene at some later, unspecified date at the DA's office, Jamie tells McCoy and Adam Schiff that the paternity test proved Harlan to be Lancer's daughter, so she will get the $53 million and Silverman will collect his $17 million. Jamie comments, "No wonder everybody hates the legal profession." A bit agitated McCoy tells Jamie to make sure that Chrissy's son gets a copy of Sonja's full confession (allocution in court), so that he'll be able to collect from Harlan and Silverman "when he sues them for his mother's wrongful death." Adam smiles and says...."Lawyers!"       

* I'm not an attorney to agree or disagree with the judgment, but the DA's office argues that if Mr. Silverman were representing Sonja Harlan, he would have told the police that and kept his mouth shut. Marjorie Larson, Harlan's defense attorney, argues that Sonja Harlan believed that Silverman was her attorney, and that this belief is the only thing that counted. It is that argument that Judge Yee accepts.

** To me, this is the weak part of the script, as it's hard to believe that a multimillionaire would have such a loosely worded will, and not an ironclad will written by a top law firm and reviewed by several attorneys of that law firm, although anything is possible.

Photo is of the 2010 DVD set for Season 7 by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment 

WORD HISTORY:
Fragrant-This word goes back to Indo European "bhragh," which meant, "to smell, to give off an odor or scent." This gave Italic "fragro," meaning, "to give off a sweet smell, to smell of something" (the beginning Indo European "b" became "f" in Italic). This gave Latin the verb "fragrare," with the same general meaning, and its participle form was "fragrans," meaning, "giving off a sweet smell, smelling of something." English borrowed the word from Latin as "fragrant" in the 1400s.