... to oneself, that is. Judge Denise Grobman (Lindsay Crouse) is shot when her car is stolen as she is returning from a weekend in the country. She is badly injured but not killed, plus she has a concealed carry permit and returns fire with the thief, who escapes but is presumed badly injured. But then detectives Lennie Briscoe and Ed Green begin their investigation and discover that a car thief could have easily lifted an expensive model in the same garage right next to the judge's car, because the owner always left the keys in it (he was always forgetting where he put them, so he left them in the ignition). Oh the eccentricity of the one percent, but that's another story.
Our able observant detectives follow the trail of the stolen car back to (eventually) the body of the car thief, dead from the judge's bullets. Large sums of money are found on him, showing that this might have been a hit. However, the judge came back early from her country house that Sunday, in response to a phone call from her assistant. Only three people knew about that call - the assistant, the judge, and the judge's husband of 27 years. More investigation is done. The husband (John Heard as Walter Grobman) doesn't play the field, doesn't gamble, in fact has no vices at all. But EVERYTHING points to him, including a half hour of time when he was out of the judge's company jogging, coinciding with a call made from a pay phone in the same town to the dead hit-man.
The judge will live - I guess I should say exist - through the shooting according to her doctors. However, she is in horrible pain, a paraplegic, on dialysis with one kidney removed and the other ruined. Plus she now needs a colostomy bag and will need round the clock nursing care for the rest of her life. When presented with all of the evidence, she still professes her husband's innocence and her willingness to testify on his behalf, but now she has a new request, she requests the right to discontinue dialysis and die.
So now the criminal justice system AND her husband are involved in a flurry of legal activity about this woman's right to die, none of it really being about her best interest. Did her husband do it, or was it somebody who had a grudge against the judge who happened to be watching her? Watch and find out. Sometimes Law and Order plays out just like you think it is going to, sometimes not, usually at the last minute.
