Law & Order/Tear Jerker

Tear Jerkers in Law & Order include:

Law & Order had one with Lennie Briscoe in Season 8. His daughter gets arrested for drug possession and is forced to testify against her dealer, and after his acquittal she ends up murdered. He goes to the crime scene and has to be restrained from cradling her body by his partner. To see this gruff, world-weary homicide detective on the verge of sobbing just makes you ache.

Lennie: "She was my baby, Rey. What am I gonna do?"
Rey: "You're going home with me, partner."

As Rey Curtis prepares to leave the squad to care for his dying wife, Lennie gives him a goodbye hug:

Lennie: Anything, Rey. I don't care what time it is. Anything. You pick up the damn phone and you call me.

In the season 3 episode Mother Love, a former honor student turned crack addict has been shot dead. The trail leads first to her dealer/boyfriend, but there is no evidence to link him to it. Stone and Robinette discover that the girl had stolen from her family, including bearer bonds from her grandmother, to support her habit and suspicion falls on her father. Ultimately, they discover that it was her mother who had killed her. Performed by the incomparable Mary Alice (the Oracle in The Matrix Revolutions).

Virginia Bryant: "I looked at her, it was so hard. Those little lines of blood in her eyes, her hands full of holes. My baby... It was so pitiful. She gave me the gun. She begged me, 'Mama...put me out of my misery. Do it for me...please.' I...I gave up. I gave her what she wanted. I killed my baby."

In the Season 10 "Endurance", a mother has been put on trial for murdering her son, who suffered from severe physical and mental health problems which had obviously taken their toll on her. Upon his cross-examination, McCoy inadvertently prompts the mother to break down on the stand and admit that she had watched him have what she thought was a fatal seizure, unable to bear saving him only to force him to endure the pain and suffering he was forced to live through, and actually attempted to kill herself with her son's pills so that they would both die together before coming to her senses. The woman's tearful breakdown as she insists that she couldn't bear to see her son suffer any more is so affecting that even the hard-assed, seen-it-all-before McCoy looks shaken by it. And notably, it marks one of the few times he deliberately enables a technically guilty party to receive a lighter sentence.
- There's a similar episode where he's cross examining a pediatric oncologist who killed a man who had conned her out of money by claiming he could speak to the dead. The woman breaks down and begins babbling uncontrollably and McCoy is shocked to realize that for once, the accused wasn't presenting a bullshit defense. Years and years of watching children die despite her best efforts had taken it's toll on her, and this man scamming her was the final blow.
The ending of Season 4's "Mayhem". A very socially awkward but endearing man is on trial for a string of brutal murders - he's unable to provide an alibi but both the detectives and prosecutors feel he didn't do it. Eventually, his mother reveals his alibi - he's actually gay, and was seeing his lover when the murders took place, however he didn't tell the police because he didn't want his mother to find out. However, his mother already knew, but had never told him because she didn't want to embarrass him. The obviously relieved detectives go to the prison where he's remanded to get him released - only to find out he was just killed by another prisoner.
The season 6 episode "Aftershock". Claire Kincaid getting killed in a car accident
The Season 7 finale, "Terminal." Adam has been unavailable throughout much of the episode and not quite up to his usual Deadpan Snarker standard when he is around, because his wife is dying in the hospital. The final scene is him alone in the hospital room with her when she finally dies. He begins to cry.
McCoy is trying a man for killing several people while driving drunk. McCoy is going further than usual in his pursuit of justice. Everyone is telling him to back off, because Jack lost his lover to a drunk driver. Then the defendant breaks down and begs for forgiveness, and Jack realizes what he's doing. A defendant in tears and Jack pausing over a sheet of paper shouldn't be that evocative...

Back to Law & Order