Law & Order (TV Series) City Hall (2004) User Reviews

Secret warrants from a secret court

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 9 December 2012]

This episode of Law And Order was inspired by the shooting of New York City Councilman Jerome Davis in City Hall during the last decade. However the plot of this story has a collateral victim only wounded by the assassin who is the real target and the poor councilman just was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Paul Austin plays a city water inspector who was the unfortunate victim and New York sends bills to all business and property owners and asks them to cough up money for their water like any other municipality. But with eight million customers and only four inspectors they get backlogged.

When an overestimated water bill sends some poor electronics store owner over the edge I could almost sympathize. I have my gas meter in my place inside and I live in an area where heaven forfend it be on the outside where the gas inspectors can read it. And it would cost my landlord to have the company reinstall it on the outside. As a result I get royally inflated gas bills every now and then when inspectors can't get in to read. It burns me up, but nothing like what is going on in this episode.

A key piece of evidence was also seized by the Feds because they're conducting their own investigation. Because this store shipped video games to Algeria with technology that could be used for missile guidance systems they got on the Federal radar. And with a warrant from a secret court they were on the perpetrator's property and taking evidence for their case two days before Jerry Orbach and Jesse Martin got there.

There is such a court it's called a FISA Court the Federal Information Securities Act court and secret warrants are obtained in this secret court. That impassioned defender of the Bill Of Rights, Danielle Melnick played by Tovah Feldshuh is rightly upset. But is it relevant to the business at end of her client shooting a City Councilman even by accident?

Nicely done episode of Law And Order, both entertaining and covering a wide range of issues.

Shape Of Things To Come.

[rmax304823 · 8/10 · 22 April 2011]

The episode is particularly provocative, not just because of its story but because of what followed in the real world after its airing. It was shown in 2004, in the midst of America's reaction to the lunatic attacks on 9/11 by terrorists that killed some 3,000 innocent people in New York.

As part of our enhanced vigilance, the Patriot Act was passed. It established the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which created a court that could grant search warrants and perform other judicial duties in secret. They were not required to reveal the agency requesting the warrants nor the reason for issuing them nor the targets. The FISA court was very cooperative with all the federal agencies investigating possible terrorists. Out of all the requests for warrants they denied only five.

In this story, a shooting takes place in city hall. Briscoe and Green ultimately identify the culprit but when they search his apartment they discover it has already been searched and objects of importance, including the murder weapon, have been removed by unidentified investigators. This makes for extreme difficulty in convicting the murderer. McCoy needs that gun but has nothing but difficulty prying it out of the hands of the FBI, who were acting under a FISA warrant.

McCoy and the DA are in conflict with the FBI over the obtained evidence, but that's not the real subject. The intent of the story is clearly to introduce the viewer to the FISA court and its secret activities that are independent of other law-enforcement agencies. FISA warrants are not made public -- so who conducted the initial search, and why? And the episode asks, implicitly, is a secret warrant by a secret court for a secret search by an unidentified agency of the apartment of a US citizen -- in his absence -- going a little too far? There's no insoluble problem, of course. The murder weapon is finally retrieved from the FBI and the killer is duly convicted. This is commercial television, after all.

What's most interesting about the story is that the problems it describes were compounded a few years later -- were being compounded at the time, as a matter of fact -- when the FBI and CIA and other federal agencies began to ignore the requirement for FISA warrants entirely and simply conduct their searches of whoever they wanted, without any oversight by any judicial body, just by claiming the subject might be a terrorist or have ties to some terrorist-linked organization, whatever that means.

Here's what the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution has to say about the issue: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and Warrants shall not be issued, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." It's a vague attempt to balance the person's right to privacy against the public's need to know about what he's been up to. Advocates of small and unobtrusive government ought, logically, to be on the side of privacy but in fact don't appear to be.

There was a transient public clamor when these activities were rooted out by journalists. But that was five years ago and memories fade. The problem, however, may or may not have faded. The FISA court still exists but, covert as its operations are, it's unclear whether anyone is still bothering to ask them for search warrants.

One of the best episodes, taken from a real life incident!!

[branchjhb · 9/10 · 26 March 2019]

I thought it was a great episode, not just because I was in it. I played one of the jurors and some of the actors were Emmy nominated and winners. The judges that played in this episode, were the top in NYS and across the country.

The difficulties with prosecuting

[TheLittleSongbird · 9/10 · 6 July 2022]

Conceptually, "City Hall" was one of the more interesting episodes of Season 14. It is not a novel concept, with a couple of issues raised having been done before, but they are such relevant and complex issues that they are always worth re-visiting and especially if there is more than one opinion. The plot sounds like there is a lot going on, which is not always a good thing, but with the topic and themes and that it is based on a real life case the complexity was inevitable.

In execution, "City Hall" is one of the most entertaining, interesting and most thought provoking episodes of Season 14. Which was a season with a fair share of truly fine episodes and didn't have a bad one, so one of the better later seasons for 'Law and Order'. "City Hall" struck me as a great episode and among tbe best of Season 14. The case is truly gripping as are how the issues of the case are handled and the real life aspect of the story is far from sensationalist or overdone.

Almost everything is spot on here in "City Hall". On a visual level, the episode is solid and the intimacy of the photography doesn't get static or too filmed play-like. The music when used is not too over-emphatic and has a melancholic edge that is quite haunting. The direction is sympathetic enough without being leaden, while having enough momentum to make the drama sing in its atmosphere.

The script is tight and lean, no extraneous fat here despite a lot of information to digest, as well as incredibly thought provoking and tense. The story is a complex one with many relevant and quite scary issues raised and handled uncompromisingly yet tactfully. But it never becomes incoherent or rushed. Lots of intensity and intrigue here and the character writing in the second half is riveting.

Furthermore, almost all the acting is terrific. Particularly from Sam Waterston.

With the sole exception of a bland Elisabeth Rohm who never really connected with me as Southerlyn, who was often a badly written character.

In summary, excellent. 9/10.

Algeria. Not exactly a country on our Christmas card list.

[Mrpalli77 · 7/10 · 5 December 2017]

A watchman was telling a joke to two secretaries in the City Hall. Suddenly, two gunshots came from inside the building and two man lied on the ground, a councilman and a water inspector. The councilman died right away and detectives at first believed he was the target: they began digging in his family and in a town board that could have held a grudge against him. But the real target was the public servant; in the past days he had to deal with several citizens due to a mistake made in the last water bills. The one who paid the highest price was an electronic store, that received a bill 300 times higher than the usual. The servant, only wounded in the shooting, managed to identify the store owner's son (Mark Zeisler) in a lineup, but the murder weapon wasn't find in killer's hometown. Feds had got into his apartment before NY police for another case involving export license. So Police had to deal first with Feds to solve the case.

The conflict between Police and FBI is somewhat frequent in the crime drama. Usually FBI tends not to corroborate but this time, after several talks, their case come to light at trial for the greater good.