Directed by Dann Florek
Written by Morgan Gendel & Robert Nathan
Two employees at a meat-packing company find their boss, Billy Cooper, shot dead in his office. His wife Irina has no alibi and the detectives learn she had motive for wanting to kill her husband. She is a Russian "mail-order bride" and if Cooper had divorced her, she would not get her US citizenship. Irina had also had a recent abortion after an affair with a co-worker named Alex Nunez. When Nunez' laboratory gloves are found to match residue found on the murder weapon, he and Irina are arrested. The defendants' co-worker testifies that Cooper was a bully who forced Irina to have an abortion, threatened her with deportation, and wouldn't let her bring her young son over from Russia. The jury is swayed and Schiff fears the case is already lost.
Nunez' lawyer tries to discredit Stone with the idea that the key witness, who is Korean, is incapable of telling non-Asian faces apart and has incorrectly identified Nunez. Stone offers the defendants a deal: if Nunez pleads guilty to manslaughter, Irina will only be charged as an accessory and won't be deported. They confess Irina told Nunez where her husband would be and where his gun was. Cooper refused to wait for the divorce and let Irina get her citizenship first, so Nunez shot him. Nunez says he was terrified of what might happen to Irina if she had to go back to Russia. He gets 15 years in jail and Irina gets 3. Kincaid and Stone reflect on what happened to Irina's "American dream" and wonder if she'll wait for Nunez.
This episode contains examples of:
- Citizenship Marriage: Cooper and Irina.
- Fate Worse than Death: Irina and Nunez claim that being sent back to Russia would be this for her.
- Gold Digger: Nunez tells Irina they might as well take Stone's plea deal since the American legal system will never see her as anything but this trope.
- Mail-Order Bride: How Irina came to be married to Billy Cooper.
- No Social Skills: Cooper was reportedly like this.
- Racial Face Blindness: Nunez' defense tries to argue that a Korean witness can't tell non-Asians apart.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: Irina and Nunez.
- Stay in the Kitchen: Irina was unhappy in her marriage partly because Cooper wanted her to stay at home all day and didn't like her going out to work, despite her being a highly qualified scientist.
- Sympathetic Adulterer: Irina and Nunez are portrayed as this.
- The Bus Came Back: Of a sort. Captain Donald "Don" Cragen left the show in between series 3 and 4, but his actor (Dann Florek) is back here as the director.
