Serena Southerlyn

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Serena Southerlyn
Law & Order character

Time on show	2001-2005
Preceded	Abbie Carmichael
Succeeded	Alexandra Borgia
First appearance	Who Let The Dogs Out?
Last appearance	Ain't No Love
Portrayed by	Elisabeth Röhm

Serena Southerlyn was a fictional character (played by Elisabeth Röhm) on the long-running NBC drama series Law & Order.

Southerlyn joined the District Attorney's office in 2001 as an ADA, replacing Abbie Carmichael (played by Angie Harmon). She worked under Nora Lewin (played by Dianne Wiest) and Jack McCoy (played by Sam Waterston).

She often disagreed and fought with McCoy over their trial strategies in cases where she saw the defendant's crime as a byproduct of social circumstances, such as homelessness or racism. She had an especially antagonistic relationship with Arthur Branch (played by Fred Dalton Thompson), a conservative who replaced Lewin as DA in 2002.

Southerlyn was brought before the Bar Association's Disciplinary Committee in 2002 after promising to get legal help for a murder suspect who had taken hostages, to get him to release his prisoners. The man had a knife to a woman's throat and demanded a lawyer. Southerlyn, who happened to be in the area, volunteered to enter the store where the holdup was taking place, to negotiate the hostage's release. Since the man had asked for a lawyer, the ethics committee attempted to paint Southerlyn's actions as fraudulent, since she was supposedly representing herself as his lawyer (which she denied). McCoy, who had once been brought before the committee himself, represented her. She was reprimanded, but kept her law license.

[edit] Departure and sexuality

Röhm left the show in the middle of the fifteenth season, finishing out her run in the episode "Ain't No Love." Her departure was somewhat controversial and surprising, thanks to a conversation Southerlyn had with Branch in the last minutes of the episode. In this conversation Branch fired Southerlyn because he thought she was too sympathetic to a defendant, and that she was running too much on her emotions, not on facts. She asked "Is it because I'm a lesbian?" A stunned Branch paused for a moment and replied "No, of course not, no..." Southerlyn responded with a quiet "Good, good."

Southerlyn's sexual orientation had never previously been mentioned on the show. In the course of her appearance on the show, Southerlyn mentioned having had boyfriends in college, although in one episode involving the murder of a recently outed high school student at the hands of her closeted girlfriend, she told McCoy a story about "a non-stereotypical gay friend" who was deeply closeted and did not find the courage to come out until college. Another example was when she strongly objected to McCoy seeking to invalidate gay marriage in the state of New York in order to compel testimony from one of the partners regarding a murder the other had committed.

Southerlyn was replaced by Alexandra Borgia (Annie Parisse).