Jack McCoy
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| Law & Order character | |
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| John McCoy | |
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| Time on show | 1994—present (L&O) |
| Preceded by | Ben Stone (EADA) Arthur Branch (DA) (L&O) |
| Succeeded by | Michael Cutter (EADA) Incumbent (DA) |
| First appearance | "Second Opinion" (L&O) |
| Portrayed by | Sam Waterston |
John James "Jack" McCoy is a fictional character in the television drama Law & Order, created by Michael Chernuchin and played by Sam Waterston since 1994. He is the second-longest tenured character on the show, after Lt. Anita Van Buren (S. Epatha Merkerson). On January 28, 2009, McCoy's character ended the longest run of a character appearing in consecutive episodes. He was not featured in the episode "Lucky Stiff" (episode #421). His streak ends with 333 uninterrupted appearances since the first episode of the fifth season in 1994.
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[edit] Character overview
Jack McCoy brings 24 years of experience with him as he is appointed Executive Assistant District Attorney by Adam Schiff (Steven Hill) in the Season 5 premiere episode (L&O "Second Opinion") He quickly establishes himself as a more unconventional, ruthless litigator than his predecessor, Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty); he often bends—and sometimes breaks—trial rules to get convictions, finds impossibly tenuous rationales for charging defendants with crimes when the original charges fail to stick, charges innocent people to frighten them into testifying against others, and makes passionate closing arguments. McCoy is more than once found in contempt of court for such behavior, and his tactics occasionally incur negative publicity for the DA's office. His underlying motivation, however, is not, he maintains, corruption, but a sincere desire to see justice done. To that end, McCoy has gone after defendants accused of perverting the justice system to arrange wrongful convictions with just as much determination as his more mundane cases. Such aggressive actions in the courts have earned him the nickname of "Hang 'em High" McCoy. McCoy has subsequently developed a reputation with both colleagues and rival attorneys, once being referred to as "the top of the legal food chain" by a rival attorney during a case.
Following the 17th season (2006-2007), Jack McCoy became District Attorney, taking over from Arthur Branch (Fred Thompson). Waterston's appearance on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit on November 13, 2007, marked his first appearance in the Law & Order universe as District Attorney. The replacement for his former position is Michael Cutter (Linus Roache), a prosecutor with a penchant for recklessness. This occasionally presents political difficulties for the new District Attorney. More than once, McCoy berates Cutter for reckless conduct without acknowledging that he himself used similar tactics when he was an ADA.
In the season 19 episode (L&O "Lucky Stiff"), McCoy begins his election campaign for New York County District Attorney after serving the last season and a half as interim DA. In the episode (L&O "Rapture"), his opponent for the office is shown for the first time. In season 19 episode (L&O "Promote This"), it is revealed that in 1991 his wife Ellen (who he was divorcing) unknowingly employed an undocumented immigrant as a nanny. This causes McCoy political havoc during a murder case where the motive was racism against illegal immigrants of Hispanic decent. In the episode (L&O "Skate or Die"), the place where his final campaign fundraiser would be held discovered by the organizers to be owned by a man who served a twenty-year prison sentence for racketeering. Eventually, the final campaign fundraiser would be held at a Chinese Seafood restaurant with a Kosher section. In the last episode of season 19 ((L&O "The Drowned and the Saved"), McCoy's opponent's patron resigns due to scandal on the eve of the election, giving him good prospects for victory.
[edit] Personality
While his is a brilliant legal mind, McCoy possesses more than a few personal demons. He was abused by his father, an Irish Chicago cop who had also beat his mother, and who eventually died of cancer (L&O: "Aftershock"). McCoy has also stated that his determination and unyielding work ethic came from his father's harsh punishments for losing. He also revealed that his father was a racist who once hit his son for dating a Polish girl (L&O: "In Vino Veritas"). McCoy occasionally takes cases personally, especially when they involve racism or child abuse.
McCoy has been divorced twice (one ex-wife having been a former assistant) and has an adult daughter, Rebecca. A gossip columnist writes that McCoy has not seen or spoken to his daughter since 1997 and McCoy receives an envelope containing pictures of his daughter (L&O: "Fame"). He does not open the envelope; rather, he places it in his bottom left desk drawer, next to a bottle of Jim Beam. In (L&O "Fallout"), the last scene is of McCoy meeting his daughter at a restaurant. During a conversation with the New York Governor in a later season, he mentions Rebecca has taken a job in San Diego.
McCoy has a reputation for having affairs with his ADAs. He tells Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy) he had affairs with only three of his ADAs. Kincaid realizes in the same episode McCoy only had three female ADAs before her (L&O: "Second Opinion"). In that episode, Kincaid makes it clear that she is not interested in having a romantic relationship with McCoy, and he agrees to her stipulation. However, it is later revealed that McCoy had an affair with Kincaid (L&O: "Aftershock"). This attitude has often had explosive consequences for McCoy: in (L&O: "Trophy"), his former ADA Diana Hawthorne is found to have suppressed evidence so they could win a case. Kincaid is killed in a car accident (L&O: "Aftershock") just as their affair is beginning to unravel. Defense attorneys have used this against him (L&O: "Missing"). Since Kincaid's death, McCoy has kept his relationships with assistants professional, although he nurtures friendships with all of them.
In (L&O "House Counsel"), McCoy's ultra-competitiveness is underlined when he tries to prosecute Vincent Dosso, an organized crime figure, for bribing and murdering a jury member. Dosso's lawyer, Paul Kopell, was a law school classmate of McCoy and proves to be equally aggressive in his approach to his work. As Kopell repeatedly stymies McCoy's prosecutorial efforts, McCoy takes the position that Kopell is not acting as an independent attorney but as an organized crime participant; he prosecutes Kopell for conspiracy in the jury member's murder. He tells Kopell's wife that his prosecution of Kopell isn't "personal," but she contradicts him, noting that she had watched them compete for the previous quarter-century, both men are taking a "win at all costs" approach, and that, ultimately, they will all lose. By the end of the episode, even though he has won his case against Kopell, McCoy is so indrawn that he does not even want to share an elevator with Kincaid.
In (L&O "Betrayal"), McCoy tells Cutter that Dr. Elizabeth Olivet (Carolyn McCormick) had "sex with a patient" who was "a detective who'd lost a partner." The implication is that the detective was Mike Logan who had lost his partner Max Greevey several years earlier (L&O "Confession"). In (L&O "Betrayal"), Olivet believes that the prosecution is employing an expert witness who had done studies where the results were not widely accepted in her field. When she informs McCoy that she will be testifying for the defendant, he feels he had no other choice but to provide Cutter with information that could be used in their favor when cross examining Olivet. McCoy's opinion and exposure of Olivet's affair in L&O: "Betrayal" are ironic because in the 1996 episode (L&O "Trophy") mentioned previously, verdicts in several cases were required to be modified or reversed because of the work of Diana Hawthorne, McCoy's ADA, while she was having an affair with McCoy. These cases include especially the wrongful conviction of a man for several counts of murder (which led to a multi-million-dollar out-of-court settlement), while the actual murderer was not discovered until the episode (L&O "Trophy").
McCoy's volatile relationship with Olivet began with his first encounter with her, in the 1994 episode (L&O "Blue Bamboo"). In that episode, Olivet interviewed the defendant and informed McCoy professionally that she supported the defendant's position. McCoy retorted belligerently that she did not belong on his witness list. Since then, McCoy has had a tenuous relationship with Olivet, which is ironic because other than disagree with him occasionally, she has never been an adversary. At times, McCoy has to retreat from his defensive position to convince her to help—for example, the episode (L&O "Privileged"), in which an alcoholic foster son is on trial for murdering his foster parents.
While McCoy was not exactly a part of the 1960s counterculture, he did protest against the policies of the Richard Nixon administration, particularly the Vietnam War. In 1972, he published an article in the New York University Law Review in defense of Catholic priests who had been opposed to the conflict. He does retain some of the wild streak from his youth: he is a huge fan of punk rock bands like The Clash and he drives a BMW motorcycle (L&O: "Rebels").
Unlike Stone, he embraces the option of the death penalty, claiming it is a suitable punishment for particularly heinous crimes and a useful threat in plea bargaining. This often leads to heated arguments with his more liberal colleagues. In (L&O: "Savages"), when the death penalty has just been restored in New York State following the election of Governor George Pataki, ADA Clare Kincaid asks McCoy about the probability of executing an innocent individual. McCoy responds that, with the lengthy prosecution process and opportunities for the defendant to appeal the verdict, the probability of wrongful execution is unlikely. Kincaid asks McCoy if he is able to accept the probability of "unlikely;" his hesitation indicates clearly that he has never considered the possibility. He has shown mercy on occasion, however, such as the 1997 episode (L&O "Burned"), in which he prosecutes a boy with bipolar disorder for murdering his sister. The boy's grandfather (Robert Vaughn), a wealthy CEO (and good friend of Schiff's) who also proved to suffer from the disorder, had attempted to get his grandson to plead guilty and go to jail rather than plead insanity and be committed to a mental institution, fearing that a public revelation of the boy's illness would provide enough evidence to reveal his own illness and affect his reputation. McCoy leads the effort to prevent an unjust punishment for the boy.
McCoy was raised Catholic but does not appear to be in practice, and has not been for some time. On several occasions, religion has been the subject of various cases. In the episode (L&O "Thrill"), in which two teenage boys are accused of killing a man just for fun, McCoy finds his case particularly complicated when one of the suspects confesses the crime to his uncle, who happens to be a priest. When the confession tape is labeled privileged, McCoy ignores the bishop's request to preserve the sacrament of reconciliation and instead tries to use the tape as evidence. When Detective Reynaldo Curtis tries to dissuade him from doing so, reminding him that he is a Catholic, McCoy responds, "Not when I'm at work." Curtis states that religion is does not simply apply whenever a person likes.
By the episode (L&O "Under God"), McCoy had particularly soured on the Church. When a man is accused of killing a drug dealer who killed the man's son, a priest confesses to the crime. Though McCoy personally believes that the priest is covering for the man, he prosecutes the priest instead. At the end of the episode, McCoy explains why he is no longer in practice. When he was eight years old, an older friend of his, whom he "followed around like a puppy," died. When a priest tried to hear one last confession from his friend as he lay on his deathbed, the boy refused, believing that it would be meaningless. He then turned to the young McCoy and said, "God forgive me if I'm wrong." These were his last words. McCoy said that at times he felt as though the boy were still following him around.
In the episode (L&O "Angel"), it is revealed that McCoy was educated by the Jesuits. In the season 17 episode (L&O "Good Faith"), Jack describes himself as "a lapsed Catholic."
[edit] Conflicts
McCoy's unconventional and sometimes ruthless professional conduct has put his job in jeopardy more than once throughout the series. Some of the more serious occurrences are these:
- In (L&O "Monster"), McCoy is brought before the Disciplinary Committee of the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division on misconduct charges stemming from a case, shown in the episode (L&O "Under the Influence") earlier that season, in which he had hidden a material witness from the opposing counsel to support more serious charges against a defendant. Since he had ultimately released the evidence before the case was decided, he was not seriously punished for what he did. In the same episode, McCoy is given a hard time when it becomes clear that in the case of sexual assault of a young girl, he had wrongly prosecuted an innocent man who during the investigation had been coerced by Rey Curtis and Lennie Briscoe into giving them a false confession. When the real perpetrator was caught, McCoy asked the girl's doctor to give the defendant's lawyer false information.
- In (L&O "Invaders"), after the brutal murder of his assistant Alexandra Borgia (Annie Parisse), McCoy pushes the envelope even further when he arranges to present a sham prosecution to intimidate a corrupt DEA agent to turn State's evidence against her murderers. When that trick fails, McCoy, hoping the agent would lead police to the killers, orders him released. While the murderers are arrested and the corrupt agent is killed, the severely unorthodox strategies used in the case lead to McCoy being removed from the case by order of the Governor of New York. He is replaced for the duration of the case with an attorney from the New York State Attorney General's Office.
- In (L&O "The Family Hour"), in which a State Senator was on trial for murder, a medical examiner cites the wrong book during cross examination and later confesses to McCoy about it. McCoy wishes to disclose the error to the judge, but Arthur Branch decides the error is immaterial and not exculpatory, and he orders McCoy to keep quiet. When McCoy refuses to cooperate, ADA Consuela "Connie" Rubirosa (Alana de la Garza) gives the trial's closing summation instead of McCoy. Although the jury votes for conviction following her dramatic speech, McCoy submitts his letter of resignation for being pulled off the case. Branch appears to dissuade him from resigning and says he would not be "in this chair forever." McCoy replaces Branch as the D.A. immediately thereafter.
- In (L&O "Illegal"), McCoy dismisses ADA Josh Latham (John Pankow), and it comes back to haunt him. Latham is subpoenaed to testify in court, and the defendant's lawyer accuses McCoy of dismissing him for political reasons. In the course of his testimony, Latham specifies several occasions on which McCoy breached professional ethics. In defending himself, McCoy is forced to acknowledge these specific instances and his general tendency to push the envelope.
- In (L&O "Strike"), when fellow co-workers harass Rubirosa for working for "the dark side" when she is forced to become a defense attorney, McCoy threatens to make sure that anyone who bothered her would be assigned to traffic court for the next five years.
- In (L&O "Excalubur"), McCoy risks his job by telling the Governor that he is in on a sting operation involving an escort service (this installment was based on the Eliot Spitzer case). The Governor essentially blackmails McCoy into not allowing him to get involved.
- In the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Blinded," McCoy calls Casey Novak (Diane Neal) to his office and reprimands her for abusing her position as an ADA. He threatens not only to fire her, but also to have the New York State Bar Association revoke her license to practice law. (Novak was later disbarred anyhow for lying to a judge.)[citation needed]
[edit] Reception
Ken Tucker praises Dick Wolf for putting "snappin' Jack at the center of some of the best episodes of the immortal series' 19th season."[1] Tucker elaborates how the character, riding "herd over a couple of stubborn young bucks--assistant DAs Mike Cutter (Linus Roache) and Connie Rubirosa (Alana De La Garza)--McCoy argues, bellows orders, and croaks with outrage when his charges disobey his legal advice."[2]
[edit] References
[edit] District Attorney's Office timeline
| Time period | Assistant District Attorney (ADA) | Executive Assistant District Attorney (EADA) | District Attorney (DA) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1994 – 1996 | Claire Kincaid | Jack McCoy | Adam Schiff |
| 1996 – 1998 | Jamie Ross | Jack McCoy | Adam Schiff |
| 1998 – 2000 | Abbie Carmichael | Jack McCoy | Adam Schiff |
| 2000 – 2001 | Abbie Carmichael | Jack McCoy | Nora Lewin |
| 2001 – 2002 | Serena Southerlyn | Jack McCoy | Nora Lewin |
| 2002 – 2005 | Serena Southerlyn | Jack McCoy | Arthur Branch |
| 2005 – 2006 | Alexandra Borgia | Jack McCoy | Arthur Branch |
| 2006 – 2007 | Connie Rubirosa | Jack McCoy | Arthur Branch |
| 2008 — | Connie Rubirosa | Michael Cutter | Jack McCoy |
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