Law & Order: Trial by Jury is an American legal drama television series about criminal trials set in New York City. It was the fourth series in Dick Wolf's Law & Order franchise. The show's almost exclusive focus was on the criminal trial of the accused, showing both the prosecution's and defense's preparation for trial, as well as the trial itself. The series was first announced on September 28, 2004. The series premiered on Thursday, March 3, 2005, and ended on January 21, 2006. Its regular time slot was Fridays 10/9 p.m. ET on NBC. The last episode aired on Court TV months after the series' cancellation.

Overview

Trial by Jury focuses on criminal legal procedures and preparation that are rarely depicted on other Law & Order series, such as jury selection, deliberations in the jury room, as well as jury research and mock trials prepared by the defense to use psychological studies and socioeconomic status profiling to their advantage. The episodes usually start with a witness or victim's personal account of a crime. This is a departure from the other Law & Order series, which usually begin by depicting either the actual crime or its discovery/reporting by civilians. The show progresses on from that point, showing how both sides develop their strategies for winning the case. In addition, a few episodes show jury deliberations. The show develops the judges as characters, showing scenes of them conferring with each other and reusing the same judges in multiple episodes.

Plot

The series follows Bureau Chief Tracey Kibre (Bebe Neuwirth), an Executive Assistant District Attorney assigned to Manhattan's homicide division. Kibre's team, including District Attorney Investigator Lennie Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Assistant District Attorney Kelly Gaffney (Amy Carlson), follows up on leads and interview witnesses, as well as participating in trials, during which both sides examine witnesses and give arguments. Similarly, the defense's preparation varies from episode to episode, running the gamut from testing arguments in front of jury focus groups to deal-making between co-defendants. Several pretrial meetings are held where some procedural issue is argued and ruled on.

Cast and characters

Main cast

Recurring cast

Crossover guest cast

• Law & Order • Jesse L. Martin as Ed Green • Dennis Farina as Joe Fontana • S. Epatha Merkerson as Anita Van Buren • Sam Waterston as Jack McCoy • Carolyn McCormick as Elizabeth Olivet • Leslie Hendrix as Elizabeth Rodgers • Peter McRobbie as Trial Judge Walter Bradley • Law & Order: Special Victims Unit • Christopher Meloni as Elliot Stabler • Mariska Hargitay as Olivia Benson • Richard Belzer as John Munch • Diane Neal as Casey Novak • Tamara Tunie as Melinda Warner

Episodes

Ratings

Cancellation

NBC announced on May 16, 2005, that Trial by Jury would not be returning for the 2005–2006 fall television season. The rival CBS procedural Numbers debuted in the midseason in late January 2005 and consistently beat NBC's Medical Investigation in the ratings, sending the latter show into hiatus and eventual cancellation, freeing up the time slot for Law & Order: Trial by Jury. Despite Trial by Jurys pedigree, Numbers ratings remained strong, often beating Trial by Jury in both overall and key demographic ratings. In an October 2005 interview with the Associated Press, Wolf stated that NBC had assured him Trial by Jury would return for the fall of 2005, but had "blindsided" him by canceling it instead. Though still having reasonable ratings that could have given the series a second season, the main reason for the cancellation according to Kevin Reilly, NBC's brand-new president of entertainment at the time, was due to the networks acquisition of Sunday Night Football for what was coming in the 2005–2006 season, which took away programming space for NBC. As Reilly would state, "Now that we have football [on Sundays, beginning in 2006], we only have five nights of entertainment programming. When we had six nights, we could accommodate four Law & Orders." Trial by Jury was the first series of the Law & Order franchise to be canceled. The sets were reused by a series Wolf produced for NBC entitled Conviction which premiered Friday, March 3, 2006, lasting only one season before cancellation. The network Court TV (now TruTV) re-aired the entire series, including the episode "Eros in the Upper Eighties", which never aired on NBC before the series was canceled. TNT has aired the episode "Skeleton" on occasion, as the conclusion to the original series episode "Tombstone". Actor Jerry Orbach’s death after filming the episode “41 Shots” was another reason the series was cancelled.

Home media

On April 25, 2006, Universal Studios Home Entertainment released Law & Order: Trial by Jury – The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1.