Chris Cody is a professional basketball player who has a woman he impregnated killed to avoid paying child support.
Background[]
Cody grew up poor in New York City, but his natural talent at playing basketball got him a scholarship to college. His grades suffered because of basketball's demands on his time, but he had his coach get him out of trouble so he could keep playing. When he moved on to play in the NBA, he developed a drug addiction and went through rehab, but he convinced his teammates to keep his recovery out of the press. Over the years, Cody gave his childhood friend Henry Williams a total of $300,000, supposedly to invest in the community they grew up in; he knew full well that Williams was really using the money to finance a small-time drug operation, but he allowed it because rumors of his involvement in organized crime added to his "bad boy" image. He laundered the money with the unwitting help of banker Dena Meredith, with whom he had a secret sexual relationship behind Meredith's boyfriend's back.
When Cody got Meredith pregnant, she went to him for financial help, but he did not want to pay child support, as he was already paying for a child he had fathered with a woman in Florida. He told Williams to pay someone to get rid of her, so Williams gave small-time criminal Marcus Cole $18,000 of Cody's money to kill her. Cole arranged to meet with Meredith, and then shot her several times and left her in the trunk of an old car belonging to Cody.
A Losing Season[]
Meredith is found but dies after giving birth to Cody's child. NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Ed Green investigate her murder and talk with Cody, who claims that his car had been stolen. They look through Cody's financial records and discover that he had given Williams major business loans through Meredith's bank. Meanwhile, Cole's fingerprints are found on the murder weapon, so Briscoe and Green arrest him. In an attempt to make a deal with Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy, Cole says that Williams paid him to kill Meredith on Cody's behalf. Briscoe and Green then arrest Williams, who admits to ordering the murder at Cody's request. When Cody learns that the police are looking for him, he panics and barricades himself in his mother's house, threatening to kill himself. Briscoe and Green manage to talk him down, however, and he surrenders peacefully. He and his lawyer meet with McCoy and his junior ADA, Abbie Carmichael, and says that Williams is framing him for Meredith's murder because he had stopped giving him money.
After a DNA test proves that Cody is the baby's father, however, he is charged with murder. During his trial, Cody and his lawyer claimed that he did not know he was the father of Meredith's baby and claims that Williams ordered the murder over not giving any more money for drugs. While cross-examining him, however, McCoy points out that, since Cody tried to talk with Meredith directly, there is no way that he didn't know he was the father if Williams somehow knew, which leaves Williams with no motive to kill her. He then confronts Cody with his own motive - to get out of paying child support. During final arguments, Cody's lawyer characterizes him as a local hero who came up from nothing to make something of himself, while still helping his community. McCoy counters that Cody has used people throughout his career to enrich himself and avoid taking responsibility for his actions, and that having Meredith killed was just one more example of such behavior. That he had the same motive to kill Meredith as Williams did, and one more. They jury agrees and finds Cody guilty and sentences him to life in prison without parole. (L&O: "A Losing Season")