Law & Order (season 19)

A stockbroker is beaten to death and the investigation leads to an illegal street-fighting ring. Issues around misuse of terrorism statutes are explored.

• Partially inspired by the events surrounding the rise of Kimbo Slice.
• Mentions season 9 two-part episode "Refuge." 

The detectives hope that a mentally challenged patient can help solve the case of a man found murdered in a park who may have been murdered by the family of the mentally challenged patient.

• Guest Stars: Harris Yulin, Armand Schultz, Carlos Leon, and Michael Rispoli. 

A young man's murder is linked to a woman who has escaped from a polygamous religious cult.

• Partially inspired by the controversies surrounding Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
• Special Guest Star Colm Meaney and Jena Malone. 

A crane falls and kills a man and the detectives find evidence of foul play.

• Partially inspired by the March 2008 Manhattan construction crane collapse and the case of Ashley X.
• Mentions season 5 episode "Precious." 

A tourist is murdered and the detectives suspect that corrupt law enforcement officers from a small town are involved. Meanwhile, the governor threatens to nominate a new District Attorney for the upcoming election.

• Partially inspired by a New York Times report on untrained judges and abuses of justice in Upstate New York[1].
• While Lupo is searching the NY Thruway Database, one of the cars he sees is the one being searched for (with the yellow ribbon) in Season 15, episode 17, "License to Kill".
• Guest Stars: Katee Sackhoff and Clancy Brown. 

A well-known memoir writer who wrote a book about his early life as a male prostitute is found dead, but as the detectives investigate they discover that the book was based on the life of another person.

• Partially inspired by the JT LeRoy literary hoax.
• Guest Stars: Vivica A. Fox and Heather Matarazzo. 

A woman's body is found in a city garden, leaving Bernard and Lupo to sort through her contradictory life and her ties to a cop's death in New Jersey. Then Cutter's case is jeopardized by a law clerk with a crush whose judge requires an unusual amount of assistance.

• Guest Stars: Ned Beatty and Sherry Stringfield. 

A pair of divorce lawyers are murdered in their home and the investigation leads to a possible cover-up involving the abuse of adopted Haitian children.

• The murder is similar to the Mark Schwartz and Christina-Maria Petrowski-Schwartz murder case.[2]
• Partially inspired by the case of Marie and Willie Pompee, who smuggled a Haitian girl into the United States as a restavec, and other cases of child domestic slavery. 

A plaintiff in a class-action suit against an airline is murdered and the murder may have been committed by a lawyer linked to many other murders in the past.

• Partially inspired by the ValuJet Flight 592 crash. 

Harold Foley and his wife Joyce, both biologists at a local university, come home to find their son and their housekeeper murdered. The case leads to a man obsessed with a certain sorority.

• Partially inspired by the case of Bruce Edward Ivins, a suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks, who was reportedly obsessed with the college sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma (KKG) after he was rebuffed by one of their members when he was a student at the University of Cincinnati. 

A murdered truck driver has ties to the Russian mob.

• First episode in which Sam Waterston does not appear since joining the cast in 1994.
• Guest Star: Robert Iler. 

A police officer who has been having financial problems takes hostages at gunpoint and then gets killed by fellow officers. He has the keys to an apartment that isn't his primary residence; detectives Lupo and Bernard search the apartment and find a dead body and valuable stolen documents that have been stolen by a man who needs them to prove that he is related to a former President of the United States.

• Partially inspired by Jack Worthington, a businessman who claimed to be the illegitimate son of John F. Kennedy.
• Guest Stars: Christopher McDonald and Rue McClanahan. 

After an Army recruitment center is bombed an unconscious woman and her dead baby who were sleeping at the place are found in the wreckage. The case gets even more complicated after a group of voluntary vigilantes interfere in the investigation and both of the prime suspects, including the baby's own mother, have equal motives for the crime.

• Partially inspired by the March 6, 2008 Times Square bombing of a military recruiting station, the Caylee Anthony homicide and Websleuths controversial involvement. 

The creator of a religious website is murdered and the trail leads to a corrupt charitable organization who was stealing from his clients. When the detectives are ready to arrest him the suspect seeks asylum in the Embassy of Iran claiming to be victim of a Zionist conspiracy.

• Partially inspired by services like Raptureletters.com. 

The mistress of the CEO of a failed bank is killed in a hit-and-run and the investigation leads to a kidnapping and extortion plot.

• Partially inspired by global financial crisis of 2008-2009.
• Guest Star: Kevin Corrigan. 

A writer is murdered after investigating an espionage case involving the Chinese government that led to the imprisonment of a man many years ago.

• Guest Star: Keith Carradine. 

Detectives Lupo and Bernard investigate the murder of a television reporter who was involved in a love triangle with one of her co-workers.

• Partially inspired by the murder of Anne Pressly, the Madoff investment scandal, and the Larry Mendte scandal. Dawn, the name of the murder victim, is also the name of Mendte's wife. ^[2]
• Guest Stars: David Rasche, Edward Herrmann and Jill Eikenberry. 

Firefighter Thomas Cooper and his wife Linda are tortured and murdered in their new townhouse. The murders are thought to be linked to an old unsolved drug case, but then the detectives learn about a firefighter named Nick Spence, who had just joined Cooper's company and was being severely hazed. The investigation suffers a setback when Spence dies in a fire under suspicious circumstances.

• Guest Stars: Eric Michael Cole and Dash Mihok. 

A prominent charity executive is murdered and claims of stalking and blackmail surface during the investigation. The case then leads to Rita Shalvoy, the wife of governor Donald Shalvoy, and once again Jack McCoy must know if he is willing to prosecute his old friend.

• Inspired by the Rod Blagojevich corruption scandal.
• Guest Starring Tom Everett Scott, reprising his role as corrupt governor Donald Shalvoy from last season's "Excalibur."