Julianna Cox

Julianna Cox is a fictional chief medical examiner in the TV show Homicide: Life on the Street for seasons 5-6, played by actress Michelle Forbes.

Cox was introduced in the season five episode "M.E., Myself, and I," where she is arriving back home in Baltimore to take a position as the chief medical examiner at the morgue. Her father, who had suffered severe injuries in a car accident, is in frail health and barely hanging on. He passes away within days of her arriving, devastating her; while its first implied that he has died of natural causes, she later reveals that he died in a car crash caused by a drunk driver. She compensates for her sadness by speeding and drinking a lot.

As the chief M.E., Cox distinguished herself by being much more friendly and personable with the homicide unit than her predecessor, Dr. Scheiner, had been. The detectives were all impressed that she would actually make trips to see them once in a while, both on and off duty, and she was very good at her job. She did not tolerate sloppy work or incompetence, and she fired two of her staff members - one who deliberately mis-classified a prostitute's murder as a drug overdose, and a second who stole jewelry from several homicide victims. She was also a regular at the Waterfront Bar.

Cox was immediately attracted to Det. Mike Kellerman during a time when he was under investigation for corruption and sidelined from active duty. Both in need of comfort, they had a one-night stand that turned into a very open, laid-back sort of pseudo-relationship which mostly consisted of them getting drunk and having sex. The relationship eventually went downhill fast, however, and they distanced themselves. Cox briefly had a relationship with Det. Tim Bayliss, although she later admitted that it was mostly wanting someone over the holidays, and she angrily ended any relationship when he returned a pair of earrings to her in front of everyone at a crime scene.

Towards the end of the 6th season, a truck driver working for the city ran a passenger car off the road, killing both the car driver and himself and leaving the car driver's wife a quadriplegic. Facing a multi-million dollar lawsuit, the city pressured Cox to alter the evidence and report that the car driver was legally intoxicated; her tests had shown that the man had alcohol in his system but was not over the legal limit. Cox refused to lie and was fired, but she later learned that the city had settled with the wife for $45 million. She said goodbye to Kellerman and lamented that they had never put together a real relationship, implying she would have stayed around if they had.

After losing her job, she left Baltimore. She returned in Homicide: The Movie to help the detectives catch a man who tried to assassinate Al Giardello, who had been their shift commander during the series.