Red Ball (originally aired September 21, 2005)
In this season premiere, Jack McCoy pushes the ethical boundaries in trying to rescue a five-year-old girl, Jenny Clarke, who was kidnapped when her mother's car was carjacked by Dwight Jacobs, who is identified by a nearby video camera. Jack first considers agreeing to not prosecute Jacobs in order to get Jenny's whereabouts, but feels that such a deal would be unenforceable and thus not acceptable to Jacobs. Jack then threatens to prosecute Jacobs' lawyer as a co-conspirator. Jack ultimately agrees to recommend that Jacobs receive a reduced sentence, but Judge Hellstrom rejects the recommendation in part after talking to DA Arthur Branch.
From what I can tell, I don't think this episode was "ripped from" a specific real-life analogue, though I may have missed something. A few points worth noting:
- It seemed odd that this case would be handled by detectives and prosecutors who seem to have specialized in actual homicides, though that might be somewhat the nature of the "red ball," a term that I at least first came across in David Simon's book Homicide, which detailed the workings of the Baltimore police department's homicide department and which was the basis for the former NBC show. A red ball indicates a major case that requires special attention.
- Jacobs' defense lawyers probably were right to raise questions about the validity of any immunity agreement that Jack would offer given the position that the government was in. Contracts generally are not enforceable by courts if they were entered into under duress, and the situation depicted in this episode might well constitute such duress. Jack appears to have initially offered immunity and then to have offered a recommendation of a reduced or suspended sentence; the distinction probably was to provide Jacobs with further assurances that he would not be prosecuted in the future, as he could invoke double-jeopardy principles once sentenced if Jack or some future prosecutor ever came back and tried prosecuting him again.
Please let me know if you do have any questions or thoughts, and I may revise the footnotes for this episode.
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