| "Trade" | ||
|---|---|---|
| ← | SVU, Episode 9.18 | → |
| Production number: 9018 First aired: 6 May 2008 | ||
 | ||
| Written By Jonathan Greene Directed By Peter Leto | ||
Summary[]
A wealthy, successful coffee trader and his son are both suspects in the murder of a young pregnant woman, when evidence suggests that the woman was sexually involved with both men--but the son's attorney proves eventually to have been the real villain.
Plot[]
The show begins with a brownstone fire and the discovery of a woman’s body – Jenna Ludlow – who also happened to be pregnant. The victim’s fiancé, P.J. Bartlett, comes under suspicion from detectives Elliot Stabler and Olivia Benson; as it happens, he is the son of the very successful and wealthy coffee broker Pierson David Bartlett Sr., his own full real name being Pierson David Bartlett Jr., with "P.J.," for "Pierson Junior," being his nickname. An affair with Jenna Ludlow and Pierson Bartlett is uncovered, putting both father and son in the cross hairs of prosecutor Casey Novak. Novak suggests that Pierson get an attorney of his own, since P.J.’s attorney, Avery Hemmings, should not represent both father and son. Pierson retains Trevor Langan.
Father and son go to trial, with Novak pulling out all the stops. She challenges Pierson about an email regarding the purchase of a coffee plantation, and that Jenna may have been using the email to blackmail them, thinking she would give away trade secrets. Casey also revealed $10,000 a month payments from Pierson to Jenna as evidence of blackmail. Pierson said the money had not been for blackmail, but instead for the baby that Jenna was carrying. Novak then gets the son, P.J., on the stand, and tells him that Dr. Melinda Warner, a pathologist with the New York County Medical Examiner's Office, had determined that his sperm is immotile, meaning that he is effectively “shooting blanks” with what she calls “funky sperm.” This means that he is reproductively sterile. Novak also reveals that Jenna was not pregnant at the time the blackmail had begun, a fact that seems to be a surprise to both defendants.
Hemmings chases down Novak, who basically declares the defense attorney incompetent, says the trial is over, the only question being how long the jury will be out, and slams the door in her face. But when the jury is asked for a verdict, nine days later, its foreman states that they have been “hopelessly deadlocked” for those nine days, and a mistrial is declared. The undeterred Novak vows to re-file immediately, spiting Hemmings's insistence that the verdict will not change. She also decides to check out what happened with the jurors, and finds that one juror was holding out for acquittal from the very first day of deliberation. The holdout, Debra Jackson, proves to be the mother of a disabled child, Devon, who was also facing foreclosure of her home. Novak trades information from her in exchange for no jail time.
Novak finds that the juror was paid off by a private investigator, Roger Fromm, and Benson and Stabler find that the PI has fled the country and his files are being shredded. There are, however, files on the PI’s computer hard drive that show that he was tailing P.J. Bartlett. When confronted with the information, P.J. turns on his father, basically calling him an over-competitive control freak. P.J. believes this is partly what drove his father to have the affair with Jenna. The detectives obtain a search warrant for Pierson’s home and safe in an attempt to confirm he has possession of the actual surveillance photos, but are stopped when Hemmings arrives with an injunction voiding their warrant, saying they had violated P.J.’s right to counsel. When the father and son confront each other over Pierson's affair and Pierson throws P.J. through a window out of suspicion of Jenna's murder, Hemmings puts the team under more scrutiny and bars them from her client.
Somehow, Pierson Bartlett arrives at the SVU squad room before Benson and Stabler, who Fin informs that Pierson is rolling on his son. Stabler continues to watch a video with Jenna, and gets a miniscule glimpse, in the picture, of the lamp known to have been the murder weapon. Since he and Benson had not initially found a camera for that video, they go back to the burned apartment to try to find it, tearing apart mattresses and drawers and cabinets. Fortunately for them, they find a digital memory card in a can of what proves to be mill-run grocery coffee, download its contents, and soon afterwards find a camera in the wall that still has the video memory card in it.
Novak, Benson, and Stabler have a sit-down with Pierson, P.J., and Hemmings, telling them about the video and that it shows the murderer. Hemmings promptly tells them to turn it off, then storms out of the room. When father and son see that Hemmings has been the real villain all along, Pierson expresses concern that she could be getting away. Just then, an alarm can be heard going off, and Novak recognizes as the emergency stairs on the roof.
On the roof, to which she has been cornered, while she is standing on a roof ledge in her stiletto-heeled shoes, threatening suicide, Hemmings admits that she had also tampered with the juror and hired Fromm. At times she seems to wobble precariously on the ledge, and at other times she seems quite steady. To make matters worse, P.J. finally gets his arms around Hemmings’s legs--but as none of the others rush to help him pull her back, she yanks the shocked and horror-stricken P.J. over the side with her, killing them both.
Stabler and Benson stare in horror at the two dead bodies on a car roof, while Bartlett Sr. cries in anguish over his now dead son, who has been murdered by his own attorney in the course of her suicide.
Cast[]
Main cast[]
- Christopher Meloni as Detective Elliot Stabler
- Mariska Hargitay as Detective Olivia Benson
- Richard Belzer as Sergeant John Munch
- Diane Neal as A.D.A. Casey Novak
- Ice-T as Detective Odafin Tutuola
- Adam Beach as Detective Chester Lake
- B.D. Wong as Dr. George Huang (credit only)
- Tamara Tunie as M.E. Melinda Warner
- Dann Florek as Captain Donald Cragen
Recurring cast[]
- Mike Doyle as C.S.U. Detective Ryan O'Halloran
- Peter Hermann as Defense Attorney Trevor Langan
- Patricia Kalember as Judge Karen Taten
- Hisham Tawfiq as F.D.N.Y. Vestry
Guest cast[]
- Stephen Collins as Pierson Bartlett
- Matthew Davis as P.J. Bartlett
- Clea Lewis as Heaven Moscowitz
- P.J. Benjamin as Eddie Brincado
- Russ Salzberg as Dan
- Michelle Borth as Defense Attorney Avery Hemmings
- Jennifer Simard as Debra Jackson
- Darlesia Cearcy as Viola
- Michael Brian Dunn as Flight Ops Manager
- Bill Walsh as Lieutenant Igel
- Michael Basile as FDNY Wilson
- Brandi Burkhardt as Jenna Ludlow
- Erica Bradshaw as Court Officer Lyons
- Page Hearn as Jury Foreman
- Steven J. Klaszky as Court Room Gallery (uncredited)
- Scott Baker as Roger Fromm (uncredited)
References[]
- Internal Revenue Service
- Aruba
- El Salvador
- Liechtenstein
- Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
Quotes[]
- Lake: Dress to kill. Too bad she didn't get to help Munch.
- Munch: Are you insulting my sartorial splendor?
- Lake: Well, if that means clothes, yes.
- Cragen: Easy, fellas.
- John Munch: [to the angel healer] Sorry, but cherubim don't have legal standing in this state.
- Tutuola: [to Heaven] I guess you didn't get the 411 from on high. Jenna was murdered this morning.
- Heaven Moscowitz: No, it can't be. It's before her time.
- Munch: It usually is in our line of work.
- Pierson Bartlett: Great body.
- Olivia Benson: Excuse me?
- Pierson Bartlett: The coffee. Though I'll bet yours is smooth and robust.
- Munch: You know, I took a coffee-appreciation course at the Learning Annex and it turned out it was just a bunch of barista wannabes.
- Avery Hemmings: You're lucky your cheap stunt didn't kill my client.
- Novak: We didn't shove P.J. through that window, his father did.
- Novak: People's 18. The report from the lab on the semen found inside Jenna's body. "DNA testing confirms fluids are from Pierson Bartlett Junior." Note that sperm are immotile. P.J., did you know that you were shooting blanks?
- Avery Hemmings: I've seen CEOs who rape their employees' pension funds get better treatment than this.
- Novak: You're the one who screwed your client. Did you even read the autopsy report?
- Avery Hemmings: Of course I read it.
- Novak: Then maybe you should go back to defending white collar criminals because a first-year law student wouldn't miss the age of Jenna's fetus.
- Avery Hemmings: The trial's not over yet.
- Novak: Oh, yes, it is. Only question is how long the jury's out.
- Novak: Hey, Dana, wait up.
- Officer Lyons: Hey, Casey. Tough break. You almost had him.
- Novak: Yeah, 11 to 1 to convict. You have any idea what the hell happened in there?
- Officer Lyons: Yeah. You had one crazy-ass jury.
- Novak: Crazy how?
- Officer Lyons: Day one, I bring them lunch. Everything's hunky-dory. Second day, they're all screaming.
- Novak: At each other?
- Officer Lyons: No, at the holdout. Juror number four. I felt sorry for her.
- Novak: You took pity on the moron who screwed my case?
- Officer Lyons: Not for that. She's a single mom with a disabled kid.
- Pierson Bartlett: I didn't bribe anyone.
- Novak: Nooo... that fifty thousand dollar payment to juror number four was charity
- Novak: [about Pierson and P.J] What a mess. First we can't get either one of them to talk, now they're flipping on each other. I'm never gonna get a conviction.
- Stabler: And so what? If Jenna were alive, we'd be collaring her for blackmail. She's no innocent victim here. She's a hustler.
- Benson: Hustlers deserve justice too.
- [When Elliot is watching a video of Jenna]
- Benson: How many times you gonna watch that thing?
- Stabler: Until I figure out how this little scam artist had such a hold on two powerful guys like the Bartletts.
- Benson: Well, she was gonna bleed them for millions.
- Stabler: Okay, so call the cops, hire a lawyer, but don't risk everything by whacking her.
Background information and notes[]
- The insides of Jenna's cabinets are completely black but the stuff inside has very little, if any, soot on them.
- Reruns of this episode were cancelled for a period of time from October 2014 following Stephen Collins' sexual misconduct confession. The episode returned into syndication in 2015 once the reaction to the news of the confession had died down.
Episode scene cards[]
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Eastern |
Crime Lab |
Crime Lab |
Apartment of |
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 |
|---|---|---|---|
|
Trial Part 17 |
Trial Part 17 |
Apartment of |
Townhouse of |
| Previous episode: "Authority" |
"Trade" Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Season 9 |
Next episode: "Cold" |