Claire Kincaid

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Claire Kincaid
Law & Order character
Time on show	1993-1996
Preceded	Paul Robinette
Succeeded	Jamie Ross
First appearance	Sweeps
Last appearance	Aftershock
Portrayed by	Jill Hennessy

Claire Kincaid was a fictional character on the television series Law & Order, played by Jill Hennessy from 1993 to 1996.

An Assistant District Attorney, Kincaid was portrayed as an idealistic, outspoken feminist and agnostic who became increasingly disillusioned with her job. She was vocally pro-choice, opposed the death penalty, and had ambivalent feelings toward drug prohibition; these political views often came into conflict with the realities of the legal system.

Kincaid had two very different working relationships with the two Executive Assistant DAs under whom she worked. She worked with Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty) during her first year on the job, in a strictly professional, almost teacher-student relationship, where she most often deferred to his experience and position as her superior. Her relationship with Stone's successor, Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston), was more problematic, however; she and the brash, competitive McCoy often butted heads over the social and political implications of their trial strategies, as well as McCoy's penchant for going to legal extremes to get a conviction. The two eventually formed a close bond, however, briefly becoming lovers. The affair is strongly alluded to in Seasons 5 and 6, but was not explicitly confirmed until after Hennessy left the program when, in the episode "Sideshow," McCoy is questioned about their affair in front of a grand jury. (Hennessy was not told that the show's creative staff had decided that Kincaid and McCoy's relationship had proceeded to the sexual level; Waterston, however, was told, and this allows for new interpretations of their characters' dynamic.)

During Kincaid's tenure as Stone's assistant, it was revealed that she had a three-month affair with Judge Joel Thayer, for whom she clerked as her first job out of Harvard Law School. She was censured for her actions and briefly resigned from the DA's office, but she returned soon afterwards.

Her stepfather, Mac Gellar, is a law professor with whom she had a distant relationship, as he was more comfortable challenging her legal ethics and strategy than with talking to her as a part of the family.

In the 1996 episode "Aftershock," as Kincaid was considering leaving the DA's office, she was killed when her car was struck by a drunk driver as she drove an inebriated Lennie Briscoe home from a bar. (The character was originally intended to be crippled and leave the DA's office for private practice, not killed off, but this was changed when Hennessy declined to make a single-episode return appearance the following season. The character was written out to allow Hennessy to leave the show to pursue a movie career.) McCoy is still haunted by her death, as evidenced by his intense, sometimes legally questionable efforts to prosecute a drunk driver and his indignation at being questioned about the circumstances of her death in "Sideshow."

She was replaced by Jamie Ross (Carey Lowell).