Law & Order Episode: Animal Instinct

This episode of "Law & Order" first aired in March 1993. The series is set in the Manhattan area of New York City. Law & Order episodes could be quite involved, with lots of twists and turns; thus, they can be difficult to set down in writing concisely. 

 

Main cast for this episode:

 

Jerry Orbach as Detective Lennie Briscoe

Chris Noth as Detective Mike Logan

Dann Florek as Captain Donald? John? Cragen 

Michael Moriarty as Executive Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone

Richard Brooks as Assistant District Attorney Paul Robinette 

Steven Hill as District Attorney Adam Schiff 

Carolyn McCormick as Dr. Elizabeth Olivet

Frances Fisher as Susan Boyd

John Cunningham as Donald Walsh

A college teacher and reseacher, Mrs. Walsh, who does experiments with animals, is found shot to death in the school lab. The message "innocent victims" is scrawled in red paint on the wall and several cages are opened, allowing dozens of rats (the four-legged kind) to escape and run through the lab and adjacent areas of the school. These things lead the police to center the beginnings of their investigation on animal activist organizations. The dead researcher's husband, Donald Walsh, also teaches at the college and he tells the police about threats made to his wife by telephone and by mail over time and also about some recent hang-up calls. Detectives Briscoe and Logan arrest one male activist who had a pistol on him, but the weapon doesn't match the type used in the killing (a small type of shotgun), and the guy has a verified alibi. The detectives then learn that the school has a small shotgun kept in a locker in the administration office. It had been used in the past to collect bird specimens for research. They find the shotgun that has not been signed out for use for about 4 years, but the smell of gunpowder indicates it has been fired recently. 

This takes the detectives to Susan Boyd, who works in the school administration office. She tells them that many people have keys to the administration office, including students who might have a grudge against Mrs. Walsh, and thus, they would have had access to the shotgun. The detectives search the deceased researcher's office and find she had hired a private investigator. When he is questioned, he tells the detectives Mrs. Walsh hired him to investigate an affair her husband was having, but that he could never catch the two people together, although he has other evidence with letters and an answering machine recording to Mr. Walsh from the woman. The woman involved ... Susan Boyd from the school administrative office. When the detectives ask Mr. Walsh about the affair, he admits to knowing Susan Boyd, because she works in the school's office, but he denies any other involvement with her, although he admits he knew, and so did his wife, that Susan Boyd was infatuated with him. He tells Briscoe and Logan he and his wife thought the best way to handle the situation was for him to ingnore Boyd. He also tells the detectives he is traveling to Boston to give a lecture. Later, the two detectives are told by other police that Mr. Walsh booked a hotel room in Boston, but that later, AFTER Mrs. Walsh's death, a "Mrs. Walsh" called the hotel and changed the reservation to include herself (Walsh later denies he knew anything about the change in the hotel reservation). Now the detectives return to Susan Boyd and eventually she admits to being involved with Donald Walsh, but she also says that neither of them had anything to do with Mrs. Walsh's death and that she and Donald were together on the night Mrs. Walsh was murdered.

 

The District Attorney's office has the police arrest both Donald Walsh and Susan Boyd. The police find out that shotgun shells for the gun were bought at a gunshop a couple of weeks before the murder and that the shop took identification from Mrs. Walsh for the purchase. At a meeting in the jail where Boyd is being held, after some back and forth, Boyd's lawyer sees that his client could go to prison, so he makes a deal with Executive Assistant DA Ben Stone that will have Boyd testify against Mr. Walsh. Susan Boyd tells him that Donald Walsh talked about killing his wife, but that she didn't think he would do any such thing. The case goes to trial against Donald Walsh and the private investigator admits in court that he never saw Walsh and Boyd together outside of the school; therefore, he also says he can't conclusively say the two were having an affair. The gunshop owner testifies that he saw a driver's license for the purchase of the shotgun shells, but he then identifies a photograph of Susan Boyd as the person on the license photo. As the case is going badly for the prosecution, Adam Schiff tells Ben Stone to go over Boyd's testimony again before she testifies in court. During Stone's session with Boyd, she tells how she bought the shotgun shells and that she and Donald Walsh had found Mrs. Walsh's driver's license and that Susan impersonated her at the gunshop. When she explains that she was working at the school the night of the murder, but that she left and went home before Mrs. Walsh was killed, Stone tells her to keep her answer short when asked specifically where she was when Mrs. Walsh was killed. When she asks how she should answer, he says for her to "Just say you were home in your apartment." 

 

At the trial the defense attorney for Donald Walsh asks an uncomfortable Susan Boyd how she and Donald Walsh were together so many times, but that a trained private investigator never saw the two together outside of the school. She answers that they weren't sneaking around and that Donald was very proud of their relationship, but that the investigator may not be good at his job. The attorney then asks and immediately withdraws, "Or you're lying about everything." He then recounts that Susan had told the police she and Donald were together on the night Mrs. Walsh was murdered, but now in court she says she was alone in her apartment. She looks at Ben Stone and recites, "I was alone in my apartment." The defense attorney asks if Mr. Stone had told her to say that, and that in exchange for her testimony, Stone dropped all charges against her? She answers, "Yes." The judge immediately orders the defense attorney and Ben Stone into his chambers. He tells Stone that his witness's testimony is "tainted," and that accordingly, he will instruct the jury that they "may" disregard her testimony in its entirety. Back in court, the jury finds Donald Walsh "not guilty." 

 

DA Adam Schiff is furious at the outcome, but Assistant DA Paul Robinette suggests that Boyd may have planned the whole thing, where her testimony would be discredited and Walsh would be acquitted, but her deal with Ben Stone allows her to walk free too.* The DA's office decides to check into things and the publicity about the case brings contact from a judge in New Jersey for whom Susan Boyd had been a law clerk at one time. This judge says she attended Yale Law School and that she had been married to a member of the New York Philharmonic who died. The judge tells Robinette that Boyd is deeply disturbed and that one night they were working late on a case and he ordered Chinese food for them while they worked. Susan took this to be a proposal of marriage and that she wrote love notes to him and rented an apartment nearby; then, she started calling his wife. Robinette checks with Yale Law School, which has no record of her having ever attended there. Further, there's no evidence she was ever married to anyone on the orchestra. He finds that on her application for her present job that she claimed to have a degree from Cornell University, but it was also untrue. Robinette and Stone see that Susan Boyd has the ability to convince people of things that are total fiction and that Donald Walsh and the judge in New Jersey agree that Boyd is crazy. They talk with Dr. Elizabeth Olivet, a psychologist and consultant to the police. She tells them Susan Boyd fits a pattern of delusion called "erotomania," and that if they check, they'll likely find evidence of her delusion beyond her statements. They find that Boyd has a vacation home near that of Walsh. They get a warrant, and inside they find all sorts of items and photos of Donald Walsh as a "shrine" to him, and they also find the rest of the box of shotgun shells and Mrs. Walsh's driver's license altered with Susan Boyd's photo. They arrest Boyd for the murder of Mrs. Walsh. With her lawyer present they bring in Donald Walsh and he totally rejects her story about him loving her and he calls her a lunatic. Susan reacts by saying there's a conspiracy to keep her from Donald. Ben Stone offers hers a reduced sentence that has to be accompanied by psychiatric treatment. Her attorney asks her to accept, so she fires him and tells Stone she's taking over her own defense. 

 

The scene shifts to the DA's office months later with Ben Stone telling Adam Schiff how she has filed numerous motions and that she uses an outdated prison library, but that her legal work is as good or better than from a Wall Street law firm.   

 

* There's a bit of an element in this from "Witness for the Prosecution," a famous movie adapted from a story by English writer Agatha Christie. For the article on this movie, here is the link: https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2020/02/witness-for-prosecution.html

 

 

Photo is of the 2005 DVD set edition of Universal Studios Home Entertainment "Law & Order Third Year 1992-1993"

WORD HISTORY:

Alibi-This word means, "an excuse that proves or attempts to prove that a person is not guilty of a particular crime, often with heavy emphasis on the person not being present at the crime scene." "Alibi" is related to "alias," a Latin word borrowed by English, to "alien," another Latin word borrowed by English via French, and it is distantly related to "else," a word from the Germanic roots of English. "Alibi" goes back to the Indo European root "al/el," which meant, "beyond (a given point);" thus also, "other." This gave Latin "alius," with the same meanings. This then produced the Latin (location) adverb, "alibi," meaning, "elsewhere, at another place." English borrowed the word from Latin initially as an adverb in the first half of the 1700s, but the noun use was quickly established.