Jack McCoy

John James "Jack" McCoy is a fictional character in the television drama Law & Order, created by Michael S. 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". His streak ended with 333 uninterrupted appearances since the first episode of the fifth season in 1994.

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 "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 tenuous rationales for charging defendants with crimes when the original charges fail to stick, and charges innocent people to frighten them into testifying against others. 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 "Hang 'em High McCoy". He 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). McCoy'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 not unlike McCoy's own in his younger days. This occasionally presents political difficulties for the new District Attorney. More than once, McCoy berates Cutter for reckless conduct, in the same manner as he was berated by district attorneys when he was Assistant District Attorney.

In the season 19 episode "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 "Rapture", his opponent for the office is shown for the first time. In season 19 episode "Promote This", it is revealed that in 1991 his wife Ellen (whom 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 descent. In the episode "Skate or Die", the place where his final campaign fundraiser would be held is discovered by the organizers to be owned by a man who served a 20-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, "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.

Personality

While his is a brilliant legal mind, McCoy possesses more than a few personal demons. The episode "Aftershock" reveals that he was abused by his father, an Irish Chicago policeman who had also beat Jack's mother, and who eventually died of cancer. In the same episode, McCoy says that his determination and unyielding work ethic come from his father's harsh punishments for losing. He also revealed that his father was a racist who once hit him for dating a Polish girl. McCoy occasionally takes cases personally, especially when they involve racism or child abuse. While never explicitly referred to as alcoholic, McCoy is often seen drinking, and keeps a bottle of whiskey in his office.

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. He does not open the envelope; rather, he places it in his bottom left desk drawer, next to a bottle of Jim Beam. In "Fallout", the last scene shows McCoy meeting his daughter at a restaurant. During a conversation with (fictional) New York Governor Donald Shalvoy in the Season 18 episode "Personae Non Grata", he mentions Rebecca has taken a job in San Diego, and that she drove up to Los Angeles to meet him there for dinner while he was attending a conference on official business; the governor uses this to try to smear McCoy, wrongly implying that he used public funds to visit his daughter in California. In the Season 20 episode "Dignity", McCoy mentions to ADAs Michael Cutter (Linus Roache) and Connie Rubirosa (Alana De La Garza) that his daughter either is pregnant or is a mother, thus making him soon to be or already a grandfather.

McCoy has a reputation for having romantic affairs with his ADAs. Claire Kincaid (Jill Hennessy) mentions this when they first meet; he tells her he has had affairs with only three of his ADAs, but by the end of the episode she realizes that he has only had three female ADAs before her. In the episode "Scoundrels", McCoy reveals that Sally Bell, a recurring defense attorney played by Edie Falco, had been one of those ADAs. Kincaid initially makes it clear that she is not interested in a romantic relationship, and McCoy agrees to her stipulation. However, it is later revealed that they have indeed had an affair. Kincaid is killed in a car accident just as their affair is beginning to unravel; an event which temporarily unhinged McCoy. Defense attorneys have used this against him. Since Kincaid's death, McCoy has kept his relationships with assistants professional, although he nurtures friendships with all of them.

McCoy's affairs with his ADAs have often had explosive consequences. For instance, his former ADA Diana Hawthorne, with whom he had a sexual relationship, was found to have suppressed evidence so they could win several cases. In one such case, Hawthorne engineered a defendant's wrongful conviction for several murders.

In "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, went to law school with 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 a participant in organized crime, and eventually prosecutes Kopell for conspiracy in the jury member's murder. He tells Kopell's wife that the prosecution is not personal, but she contradicts him, noting that she had watched them compete for 25 years 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 troubled that he does not even want to share an elevator with Kincaid.

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 Yamaha motorcycle.

Unlike McCoy's predecessor Ben Stone, McCoy 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 "Savages", when the death penalty has just been restored in New York State following the election of Governor George Pataki, ADA Claire 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. In later seasons, his view towards the death penalty has apparently changed: in Season 18's "Executioner", he is deeply troubled hearing of a gruesomely botched execution in South Carolina, and in Season 20's "Four Cops Shot", he resists efforts by a U.S. Attorney to prosecute a cop-killing suspect under a federal death-penalty statute, declaring that "we don't go forum-shopping for harsher penalties" and "I've witnessed one execution; I don't ever want to see another," referring to the events of Season 6's "Aftershock".

He has shown mercy on occasion, such as the 1997 episode "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. In the episode "Angel", it is revealed that McCoy was educated by the Jesuits. In the Season 17 episode "Good Faith", he describes himself as "a lapsed Catholic". On several occasions, religion has been the subject of various cases. In the episode "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 Rey Curtis (Benjamin Bratt) tries to dissuade McCoy from doing so, reminding him that he is a Catholic, McCoy responds, "Not when I'm at work."

By the episode "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 says that he lost his faith after the death of a childhood friend.

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 "Competence", McCoy withholds turning over the statement of a witness to the defense. The statement would have aided the defense's case by showing strong motive to another individual for the crime, casting a reasonable doubt. Under Brady v. Maryland, the prosecution is required to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. McCoy's reasoning is that he was not going to call the witness at trial and that he is not obliged to "...turn over irrelevant and potentially misleading evidence." When defense eventually learns of the withheld statement and accuses the DA's office of misconduct, DA Adam Schiff is angry about McCoy's judgment call, and suggests McCoy is at grave risk of being disbarred. A hearing with a judge declares that McCoy pushed the envelope of good law practice, but that the ambiguity of the law did not prove his actions were unethical.

• In "Corpus Delicti", McCoy deliberately ignores a judge's order not to mention prior bad acts while questioning a defendant in order to provoke the judge to declare a mistrial. McCoy's case was very circumstantial and there was no body to confirm a murder had definitively taken place. The extra time gathered by scheduling a new trial allowed the police to discover the victim's body. At the end of the episode and the discovery of the body, DA Adam Schiff suggests that McCoy faces disbarment if the defense's lawyer can prove a mistrial provocation. McCoy suggests that he can successfully argue he is just a zealous attorney, saying, "It wasn't like that at all. You know how emotional I get," and smiling slyly.

• In "Under the Influence", McCoy is prosecuting a drunk driver for killing three pedestrians. The judge assigned to the case discloses to McCoy that has a personal vendetta against drunk driving and is willing to bend the law, and McCoy was also willing to bend after former colleague Claire Kincaid was killed by a drunk driver. McCoy took an incriminating statement from a flight attendant (a Colombian citizen) about how drunk the defendant was and encouraged the airline, at fear for its public image, to assign the flight attendant to an international route, putting her out of reach for the defense to question her. McCoy then lied to the defense attorney about following all relevant discovery procedures, and was reinforced by the judge not to turn over the statement to the defense. Jamie Ross does not agree that withholding evidence furthers justice and warns McCoy that he faces disbarment. The defense's case was repeatedly undermined by the judge and McCoy, but eventually McCoy changes his mind and submits the flight attendant's statement at trial, prompting a plea bargain. The judge initially does not accept the plea bargain and threatens McCoy with professional misconduct, but McCoy threatens to bring the judge before the ethics committee. The judge eventually accepts the plea and no misconduct charges are brought on either party.

• In "Mad Dog", McCoy becomes obsessed with proving that a recently paroled rapist is guilty of a new rape. McCoy pushes the police very close to harassment and is considering committing false arrest until Adam Schiff decides to put a stop to it. At the end of the episode the rapist is killed by his daughter after attacking one of her friends. McCoy says "I'm sorry it had to happen this way". ADA Jamie Ross (Carey Lowell) says "Not that sorry".

• In "Monster", McCoy is brought before the Disciplinary Committee of the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division on misconduct charges stemming from a case earlier that season, in which he had hidden a material witness from the opposing counsel to support more serious charges against a defendant. Since McCoy 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 "Invaders", after the brutal murder of McCoy's 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 "The Family Hour", in which a state senator was on trial for murder, medical examiner Elizabeth Rodgers cites the wrong book during cross examination and later confesses to McCoy about it. McCoy wishes to disclose the error to the judge, but DA Arthur Branch decides the error is not exculpatory, and he orders McCoy to keep quiet. When McCoy refuses to cooperate, ADA 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 submits 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 DA immediately thereafter.

• In "Betrayal", McCoy tells Cutter that court psychiatrist 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 (Chris Noth), who had lost his partner Max Greevey (George Dzundza) several years earlier. 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 provides Cutter with information that could be used in their favor when cross-examining Olivet.

• In "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 "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 "Excalibur", McCoy risks his job by telling the Governor of New York that he is in on a sting operation involving an escort service. The Governor essentially blackmails McCoy into not allowing him to get involved.

• In "Falling", McCoy admonishes Cutter for trying to use the courts to prevent a couple from medically stunting the growth of their mentally challenged daughter. When challenged by Cutter about a case in which McCoy used similarly aggressive tactics, McCoy replies that he was severely chastised by the presiding judge, and that the judge had been right to do so.

• In the Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episode "Blinded", McCoy calls ADA Casey Novak (Diane Neal) to his office and reprimands her for abusing her position. He threatens not only to fire her, but also to have the New York State Bar Association revoke her license to practice law. Novak is later censured in the season finale, for commiting a Brady violation.

Reception

Entertainment Weekly television critic Ken Tucker has praised Law & Order's creator Dick Wolf for putting McCoy at the center of "some of the best episodes of the immortal series' 19th season." 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."

District Attorney's Office timeline

Time period	Executive Assistant District Attorney (EADA)	Assistant District Attorney (ADA)	District Attorney (DA)
1994–1996	Jack McCoy	Claire Kincaid	Adam Schiff
1996–1998		Jamie Ross
1998–2000		Abbie Carmichael
2000–2001			Nora Lewin
2001–2002		Serena Southerlyn
2002–2005			Arthur Branch
2005–2006		Alexandra Borgia
2006–2007		Connie Rubirosa
2008–2010	Michael Cutter		Jack McCoy