Law & Order Vengeance (1990–2010) watch online HD

The nude body of a young woman is found atop an elevator in a New York apartment building. Serreta and Logan turn up two other cases with the same MO over the last six months. They do a comparative study of the victims, looking for a common link, and they find it in the accountant, James Rebhorn, who keeps the medical records for the gynecologist seen by the women. They further find in the accountant's storage bin photos of the victims before and after they were killed. Finally it turns out that he was convicted of a similar strangling in Queens years ago and spent five years as a model prisoner. There's no doubt about his guilt.

But the case against the accountant remains weak. A judge rules that anything the accountant revealed during interrogation is inadmissible because the police browbeat the guy for twelve hours before he let slip the incriminating information. Moreover, his wife is willing to provide him with an alibi for the night of the murder, although she's obviously lying.

It gets complicated when the last victim's parents attempt to have the case tried in Connecticut, the girl's home. Connecticut has a death penalty and they want the murderer dead. Robinet is pretty much for it. Let the guy hang. Stone wants to uphold the law of the state of New York and seek justice instead of vengeance.

It's an interesting episode. Of course most screen time is given to unraveling the murder case and convicting the accountant, but the exchange concerning the death penalty between Stone and Robinet raises important questions. Stone points out that it costs far more to try a capital case than to imprison somebody for life.

Yet, the argument doesn't quite click with Robinet. We can almost hear the wheels clicking as he thinks, "Well, why not reduce the cost of trying a capital case by eliminating all those time-consuming and expensive mandatory appeals?" A lot of people would no doubt endorse a speedier route to the gallows. But, then, if we eliminate the appeals process to save taxpayer money, why not eliminate the trial too? How about if the police officers themselves, if they're convinced of someone's guilt, carry out a summary execution on the street? Why can't experienced cops make up the law as they go along? It's not as if it weren't already being done in a dozen third-world countries.

Why should the law interfere with the natural human desire for vengeance? As Stone asks, rhetorically, why not burn down the houses of arsonists and sexually abuse rapists? As I say, fascinating moral questions are involved.

One performance deserves special mention. James Rebhorn as the serial killer and accountant. There are numerous ways Rebhorn could have rendered the character. Most people would have been tempted to put his evil foot forward, sneering, glancing slyly sideways -- that sort of thing. But Rebhorn -- a reliable featured player -- invests him with a kind of pathos. Not like Peter Lorre's child killer in "M," but like an accountant who has just spent too many hours straight at the job. Every movement is ennervated. He's just plain tired.

When a couple of parents think they've found a way to get the jurisdiction of their daughter's homicide transferred to Connecticut which is their home and has the death penalty this becomes a source of contention for the District Attorney. Connecticut has the death penalty and New York didn't at the time this episode was filmed. The ethics of it gets tossed around by Steven Hill, Michael Moriarty, and Richard Brooks. Besides Moriarty is convinced that these grieving parents aren't above a little perjury in their claims.

This particular killer is played by James Rebhorn and he's in the normally non-violent producing occupation of accountant. He doesn't get much in the way of lines, but throughout the episode he carries a look of unredeemable sadness, like he was wishing it would all end. Something his very good attorney Allen Garfield is not about to see happen.

I'd check this one, the episodes before Jerry Orbach are not generally broadcast. As much as I loved Orbach as Lenny Briscoe, I always thought Paul Sorvino had a lot to recommend him as the lead cop in the series.