Spoilers ahead for Episode 11 of Law & Order, called “Second Chance.”
Law & Order turned up the heat on Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi) in “Second Chance,” when a gruesome murder timed to the anniversary of her sister’s death made the case all the more difficult. Although she ultimately found a way to put the killer behind bars, it was after she went through the emotional and even legal wringer due to Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy) handing over the reins on the case. Despite Maroun ultimately winning, I found myself wondering: did Price make the wrong decision in taking second chair in the trial?
Now, Maroun is one of my favorite characters, so I’m always on board with seeing more of her being showcased in the courtroom, but it didn’t happen in the most ideal way in “Second Chance.” After the detectives found evidence that a white high school senior from a rich family had beaten a Black man to death, Maroun wanted to push for the more severe charge with no option for a plea deal. Price disagreed since they didn’t have a motive, but McCoy agreed with her.
The plot thickened when the killer’s defense claimed that he was not guilty because of mental defect due to marijuana psychosis. Price doubled down and said that his marijuana use meant that the appropriate charge was man two, despite what his boss and his coworker said. When McCoy came out and said that they weren’t read to plead him out to the lesser charge yet, Price made a decision:
If that’s what you want to do, I think Sam should take over. I’ll sit second chair. I’ll support her as best I can. I just don’t see murder two here. I just don’t. But you [Maroun] do.
She said that she was “absolutely” up for that, and there was no reason to doubt her after how she proved herself over the past two seasons. She and Price have a solid dynamic and are usually a great team even in the worst cases, so it seemed like he would be uniquely qualified to know when she was the best attorney for the case. She was invested and passionate, but that didn’t seem like a bad thing, and it wasn’t Nolan’s fault that she ultimately went a little too hard in front of the jury.
But the point when I questioned Nolan’s decision to pass the trial over to his colleague came toward the end of the episode, when Maroun was venting her frustration to Price about a potential witness questioning whether she had a vendetta against the killer. He said:
Okay. I have wondered the same thing. From the second we charged this kid, you’ve been convinced that he’s a monster in spite of the evidence.
Well, Nolan, if you thought that she was biased and had a vendetta “from the second” that they charged the kid, why did you hand the case over to her?!? He went on to make some admittedly good points about the evidence actually supporting psychosis and that they were losing the jury. When she insisted that pleading him out to ten years wasn’t enough for what he did, Price crossed a line and implied to his colleague that her investment in the case had to do with the death of her sister.
To his credit, Price quickly realized that he’d gone too far and apologized, and Maroun ultimately did realize that the only way to get some degree of justice for the victim was to get the killer a plea deal. By the end of the episode, she made it clear to Price that she wasn’t holding it against him that he’d brought up her sister.
While all’s well that ends well is usually how episodes work in procedural shows like Law & Order, I’m still stuck with the idea that Price made a bad call in handing the case over to Maroun when he believed she didn’t have a clear head about it. She did her job and the killer is going behind bars, so it paid off… but maybe not what Price should have done. It’s an interesting look at his character as well as how he sees her.
See what’s next for Maroun, Price, and the rest with new episodes of Law & Order on Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC, ahead of Law & Order: SVU (which is dealing with Benson in more danger than usual) at 9 p.m. and Law & Order: Organized Crime (which put Jamie in a dangerous situation of his own) at 10 p.m. If you want to revisit earlier episodes in the franchise, you can do so streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription.
