Law & Order/Recap/S17/E22 The Family Hour

A senator's ex-wife is found bludgeoned with a fire poker and a wooden spoon in her... You know where. Detectives Green and Cassidy discover that she abused both her kids. With a wooden spoon, usually. The evidence points to the daughter. They go to question the daughter, when they find that her father, the aforementioned senator, has stabbed her to death. The father then pokes at himself with the knife so he can claim self-defense, but only Cassidy sees this.

The judge at the pretrial is overly emotional and overly sympathetic and Jack asks him to recuse himself, but no such luck. During the trial, Rodgers testifies that the senator's "defense wounds" were most likely self inflicted, saying that he could have learned the trick from one of the crime novels in his collection, and cites an example. She later realizes she cited the wrong book, and Jack decides to cut the reference to it from his summation. Arthur takes him off the case and has Connie do the summation. The jury convicts.


 * Crowning Moment of Awesome: Connie's summation.
 * Dropped a Bridge on Him: Both Nina Cassidy and Arthur Branch dissapear after this episode. Branch is revealed to have retired at the start of the next season - Cassidy's departure is given no explanation at all.
 * Ripped from the Headlines: Based on aspects of Anna Nicole Smith's death, particularly the judge's behaviour during the trial.
 * Also has a bizarre meta-example - Elizabeth Rodgers' mistake is based on a case where a person was accused of stealing their alibi from a Law and Order episode, which was then revealed to not actually exist.
 * You Look Familiar: The actor who played Senator Bailey's lawyer went on to play Detective Lupo.