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Hockey is all the rage in this week's episode - quite literally - when a youth hockey coach is found beaten to death outside his car in a parking garage. The initial investigation seems to implicate a team member, Keith Taylor, who had just been suspended from the next game, at which scouts were expected to evaluate Keith's performance on the ice.

After obtaining a search warrant for the Taylor home, Detectives Briscoe and Green find a hockey stick with blood on the butt end of it. Abbie Carmichael learns that Keith's father, Ray Taylor, has a history of getting into violent altercations at his son's hockey games, and the father of a teammate actually has one of the incidents on tape. After this teammate also reveals that Keith's father was the one who arranged to have the scouts present to see his son, Abbie and Jack McCoy begin to wonder if the perpetrator is actually Ray.

McCoy puts this theory to the test by arranging a meeting with Keith, his attorney, and Ray for the ostensible purpose of announcing that he's decided to try Keith as an adult. This has its intended effect; the father breaks down, and advises Keith to accept McCoy's offer of a dismissal in exchange for testimony against Ray. Keith's attorney correctly notes, in quite an understatement, "I've got a conflict here" and advises Ray not to say anything further. Legally, this amounted to interrogation, as the courts have held that interrogation consists of any words or acts designed to elicit an incriminating response. Since Ray was never Mirandized and advised of his right to remain silent and his right to an attorney, his statements in this meeting with McCoy would properly be suppressed, had McCoy sought to use them against Ray at trial.

At arraignment, Ray's attorney provides the proper notice of intent to introduce psychiatric evidence showing his client suffered from a mental disease or defect that prevented Ray from distinguishing right from wrong at the time of the crime. The exact defense? Sports rage, or a claim that the benching of Keith caused sufficient rage in Ray for him to lose the capacity to appreciate the consequences of his actions. In a team meeting of this development in the case, Abbie makes one of the show's increasingly more frequent references to the "Twinkie defense." (For those interested, some background on this term can be found here).

At trial, a doctor testifies on Ray's behalf that Ray had been consumed with rage to the point of being unable to tell right from wrong. In a surprising move, McCoy decides not to call Dr. Skoda as a rebuttal witness, but rather relies solely on his cross examination of the doctor and Ray. While I would have called an expert to rebut the defense, McCoy did conduct an effective cross examination of Ray, in which he admits he's not sure at exactly what point he entered his alleged trancelike state.

However, Jack didn't do as well with his closing argument. He began his closing by playing the tape of Ray's altercation with the other father in the stands, which had not been introduced into evidence during the trial. Thus, Ray's attorney should have objected to this as an improper introduction of evidence during the closing argument. The purpose of the closing argument is not to introduce evidence, but rather to argue to the jury what conclusions they should draw from the evidence properly admitted at trial. However, this would be an effective presentation of the closing, if the tape were admitted into evidence. The jury apparently agreed; it returned with a verdict of guilty on the count of murder in the second degree.

Despite the problem of the closing argument and the failure to Mirandize Ray in the meeting with Keith and his attorney, this was a mostly well-done episode that dealt with an interesting issue. Those who want learn more about the problem of "sports rage" can find an article on the topic in the January 2001 issue of Reader's Digest, or visit here. As Jack said at the close of the show, there's nothing like winning.

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