John A. MacKay

The murder of a black college student leads Briscoe and Curtis to the doorstep of a 'good' Italian girl who claims she would have nothing to do with a black man. When her fingerprints turn up in the dead man's apartment she changes her story and says she was raped and had to kill the boy in self-defense. McCoy tries to prove otherwise, but pressure from the murder victim's parents forces him to go to trial sooner than expected. His job gets harder when the defense claims reverse discrimination and puts Van Buren on the stand claiming she was guilty of over zealously pursuing a white girl for prosecution.

When a brutally beaten African-American man is found in a patch of bushes on a deserted stretch of a highway, Detectives Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Curtis (Benjamin Bratt) rush to investigate the heinous attack. Assistant District Attorneys McCoy (Sam Waterston) and Carmichael (Angie Harmon) discover a shocking twist involving the most unlikely of suspects. S. Epatha Merkerson and Steven Hill also star.

While investigating a vendor (guest star Aasif Mandvi) of apparent ``snuff'' films, Briscoe and Logan (Jerry Orbach, Chris Noth) are led to teen-age boys who make videos of their sexual exploits with female classmates.