By the end of Law & Order‘s Season 24 finale, the man that Assistant District Attorney Samantha Maroun thinks killed her sister years ago is dead. Maroun couldn’t have had anything to do with the man’s murder… could she?
Executive ADA Nolan Price certainly thinks so, which causes him to pound on her door on the evening of the killing, demanding to know . But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, so let’s back up a little. The episode starts with the death of a young model was attacked from behind and beaten about the head. DNA under her fingernails led to a familial hit, courtesy of one of those genealogical databases. And that familial hit led to a smarmy-looking rich guy with an extremely punchable face. His name, we learned, was Carter Mills. And the theory was that he’d killed the model because he’d raped her the night before and was worried she’d bring charges against him.
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Pretty soon, there was a complication: Brady let Maroun know that the DNA under the model’s fingernails matched genetic material found on another unsolved homicide. “The victim is your sister, Christina,” she said. Though the news hit Sam hard, she promised Price she would work to “nail this guy on both murders.” Wary that she was too close to the case, he reluctantly agreed to let her help as long as her work stayed behind the scenes, in order to keep everything above board.
But when the judge eventually dropped the DNA and blood evidence, citing Carter’s right to DNA privacy, it lit a fire under Maroun. Her relentless investigation did find a doorman who could put Carter close to the scene of the murder at the right time of night. But in her passion to get him to comply, she inadvertently tainted the witness by telling him that Carter definitely was the killer. And when Price learned what had happened, he struggled with whether or not to put the man on the stand.
Both Maroun and Baxter counseled Price to look the other way, with Baxter even going so far as to relate a story from earlier in his career when he did something similar. But Price can’t do it, and without the doorman’s testimony, Carter is found not guilty and walks out of the courthouse a free man.
Maroun, who is in the courtroom for the verdict, is crushed. And when Price gets a call later that night and sees Carter dead on the street, he beelines it to Sam’s place.
“Please tell me you had nothing to do with this,” he begs, and though she is teary, she says nothing. Is her look incredulous… or damning? “For God’s sake, Sam,” he continues. But she closes the door in his face, ending the episode.
So now it’s your turn. First, do you think Sam had anything to do with Carter’s death? And second, how would you rate both the finale and Law & Order Season 24 as a whole? Answer the poll questions below, then hit the comments for an extended discussion.
