Directed by John Whitesell
Written by Robert Palm & Dick Wolf
Three federal prisoners are about to be handed into police custody: smuggler Ahmed Mustafa, IRA insurgent Ian O'Connell, and drug kingpin Savino Montez. But when the prisoners arrive, Mustafa has been murdered by one of the other two. The FBI asserts jurisdiction, and takes O'Connell and Montez into a federal prison. Cragen is angry at this and insists Greevey and Logan solve the case quickly.
O'Connell has been detained in the USA for five years without charge, bail, or trial, and Logan quickly becomes sympathetic to him. Logan convinces Greevey it's more likely Montez killed Mustafa - but Montez is suddenly found dead in an apparent suicide. Patrick McCarter, the only guard on the floor when Montez died, turns out to also be in the IRA. He takes a plea and is prepared to testify against O'Connell.
On the day of O'Connell's release, he is re-arrested for Mustafa's murder. His lawyer tries to portray the case as a further attempt to persecute O'Connell. In court Stone produces a witness who testifies that Mustafa was used as a middle man to procure weapons for the IRA. He cheated them in a deal, so they put out a hit on him. O'Connell insists that he is a member of Sinn Féin but has no involvement with the IRA. Stone asks O'Connell to state under oath that he's never committed a violent act; O'Connell agrees.
Stone then calls a rebuttal witness: a woman whose husband and children were killed in London by a bomb O'Connell planted. The bomb was inside a briefcase O'Connell left on the street, and she personally saw him leave it there. O'Connell is found guilty.
This episode contains examples of:
- Affably Evil: O'Connell is charming and witty but has no problem with killing people in cold blood.
- Embarrassing Middle Name: Patrick Aloysius McCarter.
- The End Justifies the Means: O'Connell's motivation amounts to this.
- Fighting Irish: Most of the Irish characters in the episode are involved with the IRA.
- Outliving One's Offspring: The rebuttal witness, whose husband and children were killed in London by a bomb O'Connell planted.
- Ripped from the Headlines: Based on Joe Doherty, an IRA member who fought a nine-year legal battle to avoid being extradited and deported from the USA.
