Jack McCoy

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 running character on the show, after Anita Van Buren.

Character overview

McCoy is appointed Executive Assistant District Attorney bringing 24 years of experience with him by Adam Schiff (L&O: "Second Opinion). He quickly establishes himself as a more unconventional, ruthless litigator than his predecessor, Ben Stone; he often bends (sometimes breaks) trial rules to get convictions, finds impossibly tenuous rationales for charging defendants with crimes when the original charges don't stick, charges innocent people to frighten them into testifying against others or out of vindictiveness because he sees them as morally, if not legally responsible, and makes passionate closing arguments. McCoy is more than once found in contempt of court for such behavior, and his tactics occasionally incur bad press for the DA's office. His underlying motivation, however, is not 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. 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. Waterston's appearance on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit on November 13, 2007, marks his first appearance in the Law & Order universe as District Attorney. The replacement for his former position is Michael Cutter, a prosecutor with a penchant for recklessness. This occasionally presents political difficulties for the new District Attorney.

In the episode "Illegal," he fires an ADA (played by John Pankow) and it comes back to haunt him as the lawyer is subpoenaed to testify and the defendant's lawyer brings out McCoy's so-called liberal bias when he is on the stand.

Personality

While he is a brilliant legal mind, McCoy possesses more than a few personal demons. He was abused by his father, an Irish Chicago cop who also beat his mother and who eventually died of cancer (L&O: "Aftershock"). McCoy has also stated that his determination and workaholic attitude came from his father's harsh punishments for losing; his father even beat him when he lost a game of darts to to an older man when he was 8 years old(L&O: "Aftershock"). He also revealed that his father was a racist who once hit his son for dating a Polish girl named "Sheila Kowalski", (L&O: "In Vino Veritas"). McCoy rejected his Catholic faith as a child after his best friend's death (L&O: "Under God").

McCoy occasionally takes cases personally, especially when they involve racism or child abuse. In the beginning, he is also a notorious womanizer, having had sexual relationships with four of his female assistants.

However, this has often blown up in his face: one such assistant, Diana Hawthorne, is found to have suppressed evidence so they could win a case (L&O: "Trophy"); another, Claire Kincaid, is killed in a car accident (L&O: "Aftershock"). 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.

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. He has shown mercy on occasion, however, such as the 1997 episode "Burned," in which he prosecutes a boy with bipolar disorder for murdering his sister. The boy's grandfather (played by Robert Vaughn), a wealthy CEO (and good friend of Schiff's) who also suffers from the disorder, attempts to get his grandson to plead guilty and go to jail rather than plead insanity and be committed to a mental institution. McCoy leads the effort to prevent an unjust punishment for the boy.

McCoy is divorced (his 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"), which involved a Russian citizen looking for his kidnapped daughter in New York and the means he took to find her, the last scene is of McCoy meeting his daughter at a restaurant.

While McCoy was not exactly a part of the 1960s counterculture, he did protest against the policies of the Nixon administration, particularly the Vietnam war. In 1972, he published an article in the New York University Law Review in defense of Catholic priests opposed to the conflict. He retains some of the wild streak from his youth; he has a BMW motorcycle, which he sometimes rides home from work, and is a huge fan of punk rock bands like The Clash. He drives a Yamaha (L&O: "Rebels").

Conflicts within the Law & Order universe

McCoy's unconventional and sometimes ruthless professional conduct has put his job in jeopardy more than once throughout the series. Three of the more serious occurrences are:

• 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 (portrayed in "Under The Influence" earlier that season) in which he hid a material witness from the opposing counsel to support more serious charges against a defendant. As he ultimately released the evidence before the case was decided, he is not seriously punished for what he did.

• In (L&O: "Invaders"), after the brutal murder of his assistant Alexandra Borgia, 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 will 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 Senator is tried 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 Branch decides the error is trivial and non-exculpatory and orders McCoy to keep quiet. When McCoy refuses to cooperate, Connie Rubirosa gives the trial's closing summation instead of him. Although the jury votes to convict following her dramatic speech, McCoy tenders his resignation for being pulled off the case. Branch appears to dissuade him from resigning, however, and McCoy replaces Branch as the D.A. immediately thereafter.

McCoy is also frequently in conflict with those co-workers whom he outranks. One example of this is:

• In the SVU episode "Blinded", McCoy calls Casey Novak to his office and reprimands her for abusing her position as an ADA. He threatens to not only fire her, but to have the New York State Bar Association revoke her license to practice law.

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
2007 - Present	Connie Rubirosa	Michael Cutter	Jack McCoy