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Law and Order's return from the holiday hiatus presents us with an excellent illustration of the old expression that "A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client." This maxim especially applies when the defendant is not an attorney, but rather a law school dropout.

This week, the owners and employees of a jewelry store are found killed execution style. Detectives Briscoe and Green encounter a significant obstacle when they discover the tapes were removed from the store's security system. Their first break in the case comes when the crime scene analysis finds a set of fingerprints in the store that matches fingerprints in the apartment of one of the victims, Gail Churchill.

The fingerprints in question belong to a Richard Morriston, who has two prior complaints of domestic violence in addition to a fraud conviction. When the detectives finally view the mug shot of Morriston, they immediately recognize him as "Mark Landry," Gail's boyfriend and real estate agent. A warrant is requested to search his apartment, but Morriston arrives before the warrant. However, Green manages to block Morriston's access to the apartment by sticking a toothpick in the lock. Once the warrant arrives, the tapes from the security cameras are discovered in the apartment, and they clearly depict Morriston leading the victims to the back office where the killing occurred.

The defense attorney moves to suppress the tapes, arguing that putting the toothpick in the lock constituted a seizure of the entire apartment before the warrant was served. Jack McCoy attempts to rebut this argument by pointing out that the tapes unequivocally show Morriston is the perpetrator.

Unfortunately, this argument is off track, as the issue is not the reliability of the evidence, but rather, the method in which it was acquired. McCoy also hints - but never directly states - that he considers the toothpick maneuver to be justified by exigent circumstances in which the police had to act or face the possible destruction of evidence. However, there are two problems with this argument as well. The first is that the police had no indication that they'd find any evidence at all. Second, when there truly are exigent circumstances, the police are allowed to enter without a warrant. Thus, Green's use of the toothpick rather than entering the apartment at that time seems to belie any claim that exigent circumstances were present.

The defense is off to a good start here, but Morriston is evidently not satisfied; he decides to fire his attorney. We soon discover the reason for this unorthodox move: Morriston has decided to adopt a strategy of charming the jury into acquitting him, which would be much more difficult to do if he's a silent defendant at the defense table. Fortunately for Morriston, his attorney is ordered to stay on as a legal advisor. The defendant doesn't do that well representing himself: in efforts to portray himself as a "nice guy," he openly admits he doesn't know what questions to ask, and the "legal advisor" has to intervene in those portions of the case. One such example is when he attempts to cross-examine the medical examiner and he says, "There's no debate that the victims are horribly dead. I'm not sure what to ask." The legal advisor steps in and asks, "Did you find any forensic evidence connecting my client to the crime?" An even more telling instance is when he rises to cross-examine Beth's mother and attempts to manipulate the jury into thinking he's too nice to be a killer by saying, "She's been through enough, I have no questions." While it is important that a defendant comes across as sympathetic and likable, this need is overridden by the necessity of asking questions and making arguments that provide a legal defense. Simply trying to charm the jury without asking the relevant questions and making the legal arguments is extremely risky to say the least.

Furthermore, the questions Morriston does ask are not directed to the witnesses on the stand, but rather to the woman serving as the jury foreperson. This flirting causes McCoy to request that she be removed from the jury, and the judge denies this request. On this issue, the judge probably could have ruled properly either way.

Yet another risk of self-representation arises when Morriston calls an alibi witness. McCoy points out that this witness had not been placed on a witness list, nor had he been provided with the required notice of intent to offer an alibi defense in the pre-trial stages. Morriston's ignorance of trial procedure threatened to give him an unfair advantage. In this instance, the judge removes the prejudice by granting the prosecution a 48-hour recess to investigate the alibi witness. The investigation reveals that Morriston has suddenly started having long dinners with this witness. When McCoy elicits testimony to this effect, the jury foreperson doesn't look at all happy.

The jury deliberations result in a hung jury, and a mistrial is declared. Jack and Abbie are talking about other cases they have when the foreperson walks in to confess that she may have exerted undue influence to gain an acquittal. She stated that she thought the defendant was innocent, that they had some "magical" connection as soul mates. I wouldn't exactly recommend murder trials as a place to look for a soul mate, particularly when the "soul mate" is the defendant. Jack's further questioning reveals that Morriston and the foreperson had gone out to dinner. (Counting the dinners with the alibi witness, that's quite a few dinners out for a person litigating a murder trial.) However, at the most, this confession from the jury foreperson only exposes Morriston to an additional charge of jury tampering. The mistrial caused by the hung jury has already given Jack the right to retry Morriston if he desires. Ironically, not understanding this point may well cost the defendant his life; had he consulted with an attorney he would have been told that the juror's confession is not the source of the state's right to retry him. Hopefully this would have eliminated Morriston's perceived need to strangle the jury foreperson at the end, which does cost him his life when the juror successfully defends herself with a pair of shears.

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