Benjamin Stone

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Ben Stone
Law & Order character
Time on show	1990-1994
Preceded	None
Succeeded	Jack McCoy
First appearance	Everybody's Favorite Bagman
Last appearance	Old Friends
Portrayed by	Michael Moriarty

Ben Stone was a fictional character on the TV drama Law & Order, portrayed by Michael Moriarty.

Stone worked in the Manhattan District Attorney's office under Alfred Wentworth (in the pilot episode) and Adam Schiff. It was Schiff with whom he was closest, treating him as a kind of surrogate father (his own father having been an overbearing alcoholic, as revealed in the episode "Prescription For Death".)

Stone became Executive Assistant DA in 1985 after convicting con artist and murderer Philip Swann (who, in the 1993 episode "American Dream", entered a civil suit against Stone when the validity of the conviction was called into question). Stone's assistants have been Paul Robinette and Claire Kincaid, both of whom revered him as a kind of mentor.

A strict, unyielding boss, he could be very difficult to work with; in the pilot episode, Detectives Max Greevey and Mike Logan, intimated that Stone "ate ADAs for lunch." Even so, Stone was usually rather soft-spoken; he was fond of using harmless words like "sir" to convey his contempt for the people he prosecuted.

The 1990 episode "The Troubles" established that Stone is a Catholic who was mostly raised by his Irish grandmother. He is divorced with one daughter, who was never seen on the show, except by way of a photograph of a young child kept on a shelf in his office. (Coincidentally, the child in the actual photograph used on the set was Moriarty's own son, Matthew.)

Stone would occasionally let his faith and strongly-held liberal convictions (he was pro-choice and opposed the death penalty) cloud his judgment. By the 1994 season, he had become disillusioned with the compromises his job increasingly required. The last straw was in the episode "Old Friends", which portrayed a racketeering case in which the main witness, whose safety Stone had personally guaranteed, was murdered by the Russian Mafia. Wracked with guilt, he resigned. He was succeeded by Jack McCoy as Executive ADA.