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Conviction (2006) is a short-lived Law & Order spinoff starring Stephanie March as Alex Cabot, formerly of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, now the bureau chief of the District Attorney's office. Like Law & Order: Trial by Jury, it focused on the Law Procedural side of the story, although it spent more time exploring the characters' personal drama than other Law & Order series.

The series was canceled after only 13 episodes. Two of the actors went on to become regulars in other Law & Order series: Milena Govich as Det. Nina Cassady in Law & Order's 17th season and Julianne Nicholson as Megan Wheeler on Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Not to be confused with the 2004 British crime drama Conviction or the 2016 ABC series of the same name.


This series features examples of:

  • Butt-Monkey: Potter.
  • Driven to Suicide: A rape victim whose rapist plea bargains his way out of jail time.
  • Everybody Has Lots of Sex: You can count on one hand the main characters in this show who aren't shown banging someone's gavel.
  • Faking the Dead: In one episode, Peluso is prosecuting a man who faked his death so that his wife and son would get his life insurance money, because he believed that they would be better off without him.
  • Friends with Benefits: Steele and Rossi have this kind of thing going on for most of the series, despite various complications like Steele's somewhat obvious feelings for Cabot, and an aggressive defendant who reveals their relationship in the newspaper in an attempt to sabotage the case against her.
  • Hostage Situation: A defendant takes over a courtroom in the finale and holds attorneys and bystanders alike hostage until his demands are met.
  • Last-Minute Hookup: Finn and Peluso.
  • Law Procedural: Most of the show focuses on prosecutors... well, prosecuting.
  • Naughty by Night: One episode's rape victim, who has difficulty testifying because it requires her to own up to her very active sex life with her father in the courtroom. He doesn't take it at all well, and ends up murdering her near the end of the trial.
  • Parental Abandonment: Peluso's father left his family for another woman when Peluso was young.
  • Plea Bargain: Jessica reluctantly makes one with a rapist chiropractor in exchange for his testimony in a large-scale medical fraud trial. The victim isn't pleased.
  • Professionals Do It on Desks: Steele and Cabot.
  • Romance and Sexuality Separation: ADA Brian Peluso loves ADA Christina Finn, as he admits in the final episode, but goes out of his way to be a man-whore with every other female that catches his eye.
  • True Companions: The district attorneys sometimes disagree about things or have sex with each other, but at the end of almost every episode they're shown at a bar together, and in the finale they toast their friendship.
  • Unresolved Sexual Tension: Steele and Cabot.
  • The Unreveal: It's never explained how Cabot was able to leave Witness Protection. Law & Order: Special Victims Unit clarifies that the man who shot her in 2003 has since been extradited to Northern Ireland.
  • Will They or Won't They?: To a degree, Finn and Peluso. They seem to have a habit of sort-of asking each other out either without one of them noticing or without either or them noticing. This is later resolved in the series finale, when Peluso reveals to Finn that he's in love with her and it's implied by the ending that the two will start a relationship.

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