Recap pages are Spoilers Off per policy and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned
Warren Slater, an executive at The Fairhaven Group, an insurance company, is found dead by a street sweeper on Riverside Drive. Briscoe and Green are led to Tony Garcia, a policyholder at Fairhaven, and Slater was supervising his policy. The policy in question is for Garcia’s 9-year-old daughter, Courtney, who has leukemia.
Garcia was upset that Fairhaven was denying Courtney the only treatment that he felt would save her life — an experimental drug called Gleevec — because Fairhaven saw it as too expensive ($2,500 a month for the rest of her life). Garcia killed Slater because he felt that it was the only way to save Courtney’s life.
McCoy prosecutes the case, but after Garcia testifies, the jury is deadlocked, and the Judge has no choice but to declare a mistrial. Lewin decides that it's not the kind of case that they want to risk trying again, so Garcia is a free man.
This episode contains examples of:
- The Bad Guy Wins: Downplayed. Garcia is not a typical villain, but he gets away with murdering an executive.
- Death of a Child: Garcia believed that the endurance company's decision would cause this.
- Healthcare Motivation: An "illegal activity" example. García kills an executive for the insurance group denying the (expensive) treatment his daughter needs.
- Papa Wolf: The motive for the murder is that the deceased had, in the defendant's opinion, condemned the defendant's daughter to death.
