The familiar presence of Carey Lowell who is now Judge Jamie Ross highlights, so far the best episode of the short lived Trial By Jury series from the Law And Order franchise. In fact it took me back to my days at New York State Crime Victims Board.
When I was working there I handled five claims for the some of the victims of the Long Island Railroad massacre. If you will recall the perpetrator Colin Ferguson shot 25 people killing five of them. And when he went to court he fired his defense attorney and represented himself saying it in his phrase 'black rage' against a racist society. The most incredible thing he said in his 'justification' was that he waited until the train crossed the city line into Nassau County because he did not want to cast any reflection on New York City which had a black mayor in David Dinkins.
But in his demented way Ferguson probably believed in what he said. We can't say that about Jeff Perry who worked in a bank and one day took a licensed handgun and shot three people killing one of them and then waited to surrender to the police.
Perry gives a wonderful performance as a man totally consumed by the pitfalls of his life. He paints this incredible picture of how his life went completely to pieces after his son was hurt in a drunk driving accident, he got mugged, his marriage fell apart, he was passed over for promotion and believe it or not he actually elicits sympathy from some of the jurors.
However the team of Bebe Neuwirth and Amy Carlson and their investigators Kirk Acevedo and Scott Cohen manage to come up with evidence that all of this was quite deliberately planned.
There was another incident that reminded of my working life. We saw some of the jurors on break in a café and they were discussing the case and another came by and asked if that's what they were doing and they clammed up. On one of my homicide cases when it came to trial I had already finished up my work in investigating it and a decision was already rendered. I decided to sit in on the trial and took some vacation time to do it. I happened to go down in one of the elevators and heard the one of the jurors trying to discuss the case. I probably could have gone to the judge and gotten a mistrial, but I never said a word. I also remember on a jury I sat on which involved a rape case, one of the jurors after the first bit of testimony tried to talk about the case and he got shut down quickly by the others.
Carey Lowell proved as a capable a judge as she did a second chair to Sam Waterston in Law And Order prime. But Perry's narcissistic performance of a guy blaming the world for his own troubles really hits home. I don't think there's any of us who haven't met a few people like that in our lives who never take responsibility for anything that happens in their lives.
When I was working there I handled five claims for the some of the victims of the Long Island Railroad massacre. If you will recall the perpetrator Colin Ferguson shot 25 people killing five of them. And when he went to court he fired his defense attorney and represented himself saying it in his phrase 'black rage' against a racist society. The most incredible thing he said in his 'justification' was that he waited until the train crossed the city line into Nassau County because he did not want to cast any reflection on New York City which had a black mayor in David Dinkins.
But in his demented way Ferguson probably believed in what he said. We can't say that about Jeff Perry who worked in a bank and one day took a licensed handgun and shot three people killing one of them and then waited to surrender to the police.
Perry gives a wonderful performance as a man totally consumed by the pitfalls of his life. He paints this incredible picture of how his life went completely to pieces after his son was hurt in a drunk driving accident, he got mugged, his marriage fell apart, he was passed over for promotion and believe it or not he actually elicits sympathy from some of the jurors.
However the team of Bebe Neuwirth and Amy Carlson and their investigators Kirk Acevedo and Scott Cohen manage to come up with evidence that all of this was quite deliberately planned.
There was another incident that reminded of my working life. We saw some of the jurors on break in a café and they were discussing the case and another came by and asked if that's what they were doing and they clammed up. On one of my homicide cases when it came to trial I had already finished up my work in investigating it and a decision was already rendered. I decided to sit in on the trial and took some vacation time to do it. I happened to go down in one of the elevators and heard the one of the jurors trying to discuss the case. I probably could have gone to the judge and gotten a mistrial, but I never said a word. I also remember on a jury I sat on which involved a rape case, one of the jurors after the first bit of testimony tried to talk about the case and he got shut down quickly by the others.
Carey Lowell proved as a capable a judge as she did a second chair to Sam Waterston in Law And Order prime. But Perry's narcissistic performance of a guy blaming the world for his own troubles really hits home. I don't think there's any of us who haven't met a few people like that in our lives who never take responsibility for anything that happens in their lives.
