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| “ | Hey, Lennie, this guy's got it all wrong! | „ |
| ~ Torelli protesting his innocence as Lennie Briscoe has him arrested. |
Brian Torelli is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Jurisdiction". He is a corrupt NYPD detective who frames an innocent man for the brutal murder of two nurses in order to increase his own case closure rate.
He was portrayed by Dan Hedaya, who also portrayed Arius in Commando and Tully Alford in The Addams Family.
Early life[]
Torelli was originally an NYPD patrol officer. In 1987, he arrested a mentally handicapped man named Davy Zifrin for sexual assault. Zifrin was in fact just trying to kiss a girl he liked, but his clumsiness and social ineptitude scared her, so she told her parents he attacked her, and they pressed charges. To make sure Zifrin confessed, Torelli coached him on how to seem repentant so he would get a lighter sentence. Sure enough, Zifrin confessed, and his sentence was pleaded down to probation for sexual misconduct.
Torelli was eventually promoted to the rank of Detective in the NYPD's Homicide Department, and he was assigned to the 71st precinct in Brooklyn, where he was partnered with Detective Lennie Briscoe. After Briscoe was transferred to the 27th precinct in Manhattan, Torelli worked alone.
"Jurisdiction"[]
While investigating the rape and murder of a young nurse named Victoria Hemmings and the sexual assault of her roommate, Briscoe and his new partner, Detective Mike Logan, ask Torelli about the murder of another nurse, Mary Davis, in Brooklyn the previous month to see if the two cases are connected. He gives them the file on the Davis murder, but he says that the two crimes likely have nothing to do with each other.
He senses an opportunity to use the investigation to further his career, however, so he arrests Zifrin on a trumped-up charge and gets him to confess to both murders by convincing him that the publicity from the case would ensure that he would be feared and respected as a criminal mastermind.
Torelli sits in as Briscoe and Logan interrogate Zifrin and volunteers the information that Hemmings administered drugs at the group home where Zifrin lives. Hemmings' roommate identifies Zifrin as her assailant, while Zifrin himself enthusiastically confesses to both murders, including details about them that Torelli had supplied him with. Zifrin is ultimately charged with second-degree murder, attempted murder, and assault.
Zifrin's lawyer, Shambala Green, manages to get his confessions to Briscoe, Logan, and Torelli excluded as evidence by arguing that they were coerced. Zifrin interjects that Hemmings and Davis both deserved to die because they dealt drugs, so Executive Assistant District Attorney Ben Stone and Assistant District Attorney Paul Robinette investigate and find out that the two nurses stole Percodan from the hospital they worked at and sold it. They also talk to Marty Lake, an imprisoned drug dealer they had sold to, who tells him that James Lee Pawl, a heroin addict whom Hemmings and Davis administered methadone to, committed the murders and bragged about severing Hemmings' finger, something only the killer would know. Lake also says that Torelli knew Pawl was guilty and railroaded Zifrin anyway. He offers to testify to that effect in return for the charges against him being dropped.
When Stone and Robinette accuse Torelli of setting Zifrin up, he indignantly insists that Zifrin was "a ticking bomb" and that he committed the murders, while Kings County Assistant District Attorney Frank Lazar refuses to dismiss the charges against Lake in return for testimony that might be perjured. Convinced that Zifrin is innocent, Stone testifies on his behalf about what Lake had told him, but Zifrin is nevertheless convicted of both murders.
Stone convinces Special Narcotics Prosecutor Jerry Silbo to reduce the charges against Lake, who then identifies Pawl as the murderer. Briscoe and Logan arrest Pawl, who had also mutilated and murdered a woman in Florida, and Stone offers him a plea deal in which he serves 25 years in prison for two counts of second-degree murder instead of a life sentence in return for his confession. Pawl says he will implicate Torelli in framing Zifrin in return for pleading guilty to first-degree manslaughter and serving a sentence of 15 years in prison, but Stone ultimately gets him to accept the original offer by threatening to raise the charge to first-degree murder and add consecutive sentences for his many drug-related felonies.
Zifrin is found innocent pending appeal after admitting that Torelli told him to make a false confession, so Briscoe and Logan arrest Torelli for subornation of perjury and obstruction of justice.
External links[]
- Brian Torelli on the Law & Order Wiki
