| "Virtue" | |||
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| Law & Order episode | |||
| Episode no. | Season 5 Episode 8 |
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| Directed by | Martha Mitchell | ||
| Written by | Mark B. Perry Jeremy R. Littman |
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| Original air date | November 23, 1994 | ||
| Episode chronology | |||
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| List of Law & Order episodes (season 5) | |||
"Virtue" is the 96th episode of NBC's legal drama Law & Order, and the eighth episode of the fifth season.
Detectives Lenny Briscoe and Mike Logan are called to the scene of a drunk driving car accident, where a woman is found dead in one of the vehicles. Rather than being investigated by the accident squad, the detectives are brought in because it is found that some of her injury patterns are inconsistent with being in the driver's seat. Further investigation points to a possible rape.
The detectives find that the victim was being driven home from a political fundraiser by the assistant to a popular New York City Councilman. Under pressure, the assistant tells the detectives that he was ordered to drive her home from the party after she was called up to the councilman's private suite and was raped. After the crash, he moved her to the driver's seat and fled the scene.
The councilman denies the rape charge, and with no other corroboration, the district attorney's office is reluctant to bring charges. Lieutenant Anita Van Buren directs her detectives to find more evidence, and suggests that they look for other women the councilman may have sexually abused.
They find an attorney at the councilman's former law firm who worked with him while she was an associate. She claims that one night, after a long night of work, she was coerced into having sex with the councilman in order to secure a partnership with the law firm. She also claimed that she would be blackballed from securing employment at other law firms if she did not agree. Since this could not be prosecuted as a rape, and since there was not enough evidence to sustain the rape charge for the first victim, Jack McCoy and Claire Kincaid construct a novel case for grand larceny against the councilman. The larceny law requires that something of specific monetary value be lost or gained in consideration of the scheme, so McCoy calls an expert who estimates that the attorney would have lost out on $16.5 million in compensation if she did not become a partner at the law firm.
The defense calls no witnesses and relies solely on cross examinations and a closing argument. McCoy counters in his closing by noting that, as someone in power, if he threatened to use his prosecutorial powers to his personal benefit, he would have committed a crime no different than what the councilman was accused of. The jury returns a guilty verdict.