Malignant (Law & Order: Criminal Intent)

Malignant is a second season episode of the television series Law & Order: Criminal Intent.

Plot summary

In this episode, the murders of two deliverymen during a robbery lead Detectives Goren and Eames to discover a long-running case of drug tampering.

While investigating the murders, Goren and Eames change the focus of their investigation to a pharmacist, Jim Halliwell, who may be tampering with life-saving, cancer-fighting drugs needed by hundreds of patients, as many of the victims died despite positive survival prognoses from their personal doctors.

The detectives are unable to prove their suspicions until the exhumations of possible victims reveal evidence of an assisted suicide by an elderly husband, Frank Lowell, who reluctantly acted at his wife's request to end her suffering.

Jim Halliwell is selling far more chemotherapy drugs than he is actually buying. The discrepancy is because he is diluting the chemotherapy drugs to fill many more prescriptions, but still charging the full price for each prescription. The extra fraudulent profit he is making is being used to fund his church donations — medication discounts for church — affiliated nursing home residents and a $1.5 million pledge for a church recreation center. Generous church donations are the means to achieve the respect and admiration from the community that Jim and Penny Halliwell seek. In recognition of their donations, their Church has promoted them to "Church Elder" - pillars of the community. To encourage donations, Rev. Norman Mills has no qualms in using shame to compel churchgoer donations.

In the end, as Halliwell and his wife are exiting a church service, in the presence of the Reverend and the other churchgoers, the detectives publicly confront him about the assisted suicide and the diluted chemo drugs and arrest him. Jim Halliwell later reveals to Carver that he tampered with more than 26,000 prescriptions involving 1200 patients.

Cast

Inspiration

This episode revealed many resemblances with the case of pharmacist Robert Ray Courtney, who over a period of about nine years diluted an estimated 98,000 prescriptions of medications, affecting more than 4,200 patients, including many cancer patients who died after receiving intentionally diluted prescription of chemotherapy from him.

External links

• IMDb
• Official Website