I.D. (Law & Order episode)

"I.D." is the 136th episode of NBC's legal drama Law & Order, and the 2nd episode of the 7th season.

Plot

A dead woman is found without any identification in a office tower elevator. The investigation leads to her sister, a woman visiting from Terre Haute, Indiana.

The detectives find that a woman matching the dead woman's description was wanted for fraud by the state of New Jersey—and possibly by mobsters—for cheating casinos. Her criminal partner was her husband who lived in the city. At the husband's apartment, the detectives find the murder weapon with the sister's fingerprints and pictures of the sister with the husband. The detectives believe the husband was having an affair with the sister, and then the sister killed the victim when the affair was exposed.

At trial, an eccentric trial judge makes inappropriate sexual comments to Jamie Ross while making his decisions. The prosecution case looked solid at first, but when the husband is found dead in the Hudson River, the defense case is strengthened by the implication that the mob may have killed the victim instead. Exasperated, Jack McCoy asks Ross to see if anyone in Terre Haute would be able to verify any part of their theory. Instead, they find a witness that identifies the victim as the Midwestern visitor, and the sister as the one who is actually wanted for the fraud. The prosecutors realize they had the wrong theory: the woman killed her sister not to cover up an affair, but to assume her identity.

McCoy wants to reopen his case, but upon doing so, the defense moves for a mistrial because the defendant was not properly identified. The judge grants the dismissal, and also does not grant leave to present new charges since he feels it would constitute double jeopardy.

The state easily wins an appeal to re-present, but the trial judge is not pleased, and makes many rulings that seem to be prejudicial to the state. When McCoy objects forcefully after a particularly damaging ruling, the judge finds McCoy in contempt and has him jailed.

District Attorney Adam Schiff has an "ex parte" meeting with the judge, asking him to recuse himself because of his bias and sexual comments to Ross. When the judge threatens to hold Schiff in contempt as well, Schiff takes the matter to another presumably superior judge, who tells the other trial judge that he "has come down with the flu" and will not continue with the trial.

A new trial judge immediately reverses some rulings of the original judge, allowing the murder weapon and pictures into evidence. With this, McCoy secures a guilty verdict.