William Ivers

William Ivers is a character in the American television series Crossing Jordan. William is introduced in the second episode of the sixth season as a special prosecutor assigned by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office to Investigate the Boston ME's Office. This is done in retribution for the ME's Office going rogue in their investigation to prove Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh innocent of the murder of her reporter boyfriend. Ivers serves as the main antagonist of the first half of the sixth season.

He is portrayed by Jeffrey Donovan

Background
Prior to the series, Ivers served as an Assistant District Attorney for Boston and prosecuted many cases over his career. In July 2001 he was assigned by the DA to prosecute Anthony “Tony” Baron for the murder of his wife Debbie and her roommate, Liz Gibson. Ivers was convinced Tony badly beat his wife and when she attempted to leave him he tracked her to her friend and roommate’s house where he shot and killed both of them with his .22 caliber pistol. He then rolled their bodies in rugs from around the house and dumped their bodies in a secondary location. Ivers worked the case for two years holding Debbie’s mother’s hand through the process and eventually his fiancé left him because she didn’t want to be married to an obsessive workaholic Ivers did his best but ultimately the their were two holdout jurors voting not guilty because Tony’s mother gave him an alibi for the time of the murder. As a result, the trial ended with a hung jury and the DA refused to let Ivers refile charges. After the trial, Ivers wrote a six page apology letter to Debbie’s mom about the trial and continued investigating and eventually found Tony’s gun in the 14th pawn shop he went too looking for it. He eventually was recruited by the Massachusetts Attorney General’s (AG) Office to work as a special prosecutor digging up dirt on corrupt officials. During his career he exposed a Bristol County judge who was stalking his girlfriend and found the evidence needed to convict the superintendent of Cambridge schools for stealing from the them to line his own pockets.

Season 6
The Massachusetts AG eventually assigns William Ivers as a special prosecutor to investigate alleged improprieties. To this end, Ivers subpoenas the Medical Examiner’s files and sets up shop in their conference room to sort out the paperwork. When Dr. Garret Macy, the Chief ME, and Lily Lebowski, their grief counselor, enter the conference room Ivers introduces himself and realizes Macy was completely unaware of his investigation. When Dr. Macy offers to get him the records he requested on computer to help free up the conference room for their work Ivers insists that he is more comfortable with hard copies. Ivers then requests that he questions Dr. Macy about on the M.E.s working for him, Dr. Jordan Cavanaugh. After he is done he interviews Dr. Mahesh "Bug" Vijayaraghavensatanaryanamurthy next about a child-drowning case she worked and the JD Pollack investigation where he asks him about her conduct in both of those cases. Ivers eventually calls Dr. Jordan to talk to her and she immediately defends herself and her conduct until Ivers reveals he was not assigned to investigate her, he has been assigned to investigate Dr. Macy.

Ivers later starts monitoring M.E.s as the conduct autopsies, to the annoyance of the staff. Ivers later questions Macy’s decision to run ballistics on a murder case they were working when Boston PD was already running them. Dr. Macy explains that Boston PD was ballistics in coordination with the FBI while the ME's Office ran the results for the Boston District Attorney’s Office. When Dr. Macy asks why Ivers is focusing on this when he is supposed to be looking for corruption and Ivers explains that sometimes people use unnecessary work or work that was never done to justify needing a bigger budget to the State. Dr. Macy then angrily tells Ivers that the test was necessary. Ivers decides to get a second opinion from the ME's most recent hire, Dr. Kate Switzer, who has a history of bad blood with her colleagues. Dr. Switzer replies that although she has a problem with them that he should not pull her into his crusade against them. He later questions Dr. Macy on his policy of his the DNA sequencer, an expensive piece of lab equipment on unidentified bodies when this doesn’t usually reveal their identities. When Macy brings up the murderers they identified with that machine Ivers counters that a cheaper piece of equipment could do the same thing. Ivers eventually completes his investigation and reports to Doctors Macy and Cavanaugh that while he found no evidence of corruption of malfeasance he did find the morgue was supposedly wasting to much tax-payer money on needless tests and implements a cost-effective forensics program: Full autopsies only when warranted, relocation of expensive lab equipment in favor of cheaper stuff, and not as much overtime for the employees. Ivers then smugly states that Macy’s management style is putting the DA’s office in jeopardy and Ivers is going to prevent that from happening.

Ivers' changes are first noticed in a sniper shooting where a rapist-murderer, his defense attorney and the attorney’s assistant where all targeted. The ME's office was forced to turn over the bullets to Boston PD since they no longer have the equipment to run the test personally. They also have to send all the data on a reconstructed bullet from the rapist-murderer, AJ Crawford, to Boston PD as well for the same reasons. They also cannot run tox screens or the stomach contents of any of the victims because every test needs to be justified and since all victims were shot there is not apparent reason to run one. As a result the case takes longer to solve and the defense attorney, Shelly Levine, is unintentionally tortured as a result of unprepared puffer fish poison immobilizing his body simulating death. DA Renee Walcott eventually reveals that the investigation into the ME's office started with the JD Pollack murder investigation when Dr. Cavanaugh was charged with the murder of her reporter boyfriend and her colleagues at the morgue went rogue to clear her name. As a result of the headlines that resulted from the case their needed to scapegoat so they settled for Macy. They would have preferred Cavanaugh but that would have been a PR nightmare considering she was framed and nearly imprisoned for murder. So they would put the screws to Macy until he fired her or someone else they could pin everything on or when Macy would lose his job, whichever came first.

Ivers then assigns Doctors Cavanaugh and Bug to audit several of their cases on evidentiary appeal. They question how they can be objective on their own cases until Ivers reveals that the files have been redacted so no names are present in the files and if they figure it out by chance he trusts them to be objective. Cavanaugh eventually discovers a mistake in one of the bodies Dr. Macy handled personally in 1998, Richard Mack. When Dr. Macy was still a supervisor he supposedly ruled that Doug Lofsky asphyxiated Mack when he actually died of acute cocaine poisoning, but Bug reveals he was actually the ME on that case, not Macy. After Cavanaugh investigated she discovers that Dr. Bug’s initially conclusion was correct he just didn’t have all the facts before concluding it. When Dr. Macy hands everything over to Ivers, Ivers plans to take it to the AG to make a determination and thanks Macy that he did the right thing. When Macy attempts to defend Bug because it turns out Lofsky was indeed guilty of murder Ivers counters that it could have just as easily gone the other way and they have rules in place to protect the innocent and feel confident the guilty are being punished.

When Dr. Cavanaugh attempts to perform a full autopsy on an elderly man named Diego Gonzalez, Ivers tells her no because the decedent is not a child, didn’t die in police custody and is over the age of 40 with known risk factors of death. Dr. Cavanaugh appeals to Dr. Macy to overrule Ivers but Dr. Macy tells her to move on. During a meeting between Macy, Ivers and the AG, Ivers and Dr. Macy argue over Ivers’ role in the ME's office and Macy finally decides to give them a scapegoat, himself, on the condition Ivers leaves and Dr. Macy’s people stay. Before Ivers can respond, Dr. Nigel Townsend interrupts to get Dr. Macy and Dr. Macy tells Ivers to relay the offer to his boss. Ivers tells the AG about Dr. Macy’s offer and tells him he is considering it but Dr. Macy informs him that there is a hantavirus outbreak with at least 5 dead and they will have to go over budget to help maintain it. Ivers contacts the Governor who tells him that Public Health is sending ribavirin to the ME's Office to combat any trace of the virus in their systems. Dr. Macy then demands to know if their electron scanning microscope was sent to the Boston PD Crime Lab yet per Ivers determining they didn’t need it anymore. When Ivers tells him it is in the basement as the delivery people haven’t picked it up yet, Dr. Macy angrily tells him that this kind of situation is exactly why the ME's office needs this expensive equipment. The ME's Office later figure out that because of the cost effective forensics program Ivers implemented more people died of the virus then they thought and start pulling out old bodies they didn’t autopsy and find the first victim to die of the virus, Juan Rivera. They trace the virus to a coyote named Eddie who was an asymptomatic carrier of the virus and a murderer. Ivers is horrified when he realizes that if his rules weren’t in place they would have found the virus sooner and as a result of his actions, 21 people died. As a result Dr. Macy rescinds his offer to the AG and tells about this publicity nightmare and uses it to kick Ivers out of the ME's Office, and Ivers leaves.

When he learns Debbie Baron’s body has been discovered he rushes to the morgue to get the information he needs to refile charges. He is shocked to learn that she just died a few hours ago in a car accident while riding a bike but remains convinced that Tony shot her and she somehow escaped. Dr. Macy tells Ivers that if the DA’s office wants a full investigation they will conduct one but Ivers has no standing to tell them what to do since he no longer works for the Boston DA’s Office. Dr. Cavanaugh later visits Ivers at his apartment and shows him a .22 caliber bullet that they dug out of Debbie’s collarbone and explains the history of Tony’s gun. Ivers then tries to match ballistics to Tony’s gun but Cavanaugh that the bullet is too degraded to get a match. Ivers then takes Dr. Cavanaugh through the entire case file for potential new leads before he decides to go for a walk and get some air. When Dr. Cavanaugh joins him she suggests finding out where Debbie is to find out where Liz is. Ivers brings the bike Debbie was riding to find out where it was serviced when Tony walks in. He asks where he can make funeral arrangements for his wife and Dr. Cavanaugh points him to the reception desk and makes a smug comment and leaves. After Dr. Cavanaugh runs the serial number they find Debbie’s home address where they find photos proving Debbie’s mother knew she was alive. Ivers angrily confronts her with this lie, feeling betrayed at the fact he told her everything happening in the trial and she kept this from him. She explains to Ivers and Dr. Cavanaugh that after Debbie was shot she was buried alive along with Liz’s body and she eventually clawed her way out of the hole Tony buried her in. She then came to her mother seeking help begging her not to call the police and pulled 10-12 leeches off her body, explaining why she didn’t bleed out. They use this information to find Liz’s body where they find a bullet which they run and match to Tony’s gun which they use to arrest him. Ivers smugly states that Tony’s story about his gun being stolen won’t hold up in court because the pawn shop clerk can ID him and while he won’t be prosecuting the case he will be there everyday. Ivers then apologizes to Dr. Cavanaugh for everything he did while he was at the morgue, she accepts and they depart as friends.