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| “ | You're worried about your good works, Jack. How are you going to safeguard them if you're not in the game anymore? | „ |
| ~ Shalvoy threatening Jack McCoy. |
Donald Shalvoy is a supporting antagonist in Law & Order. He is the corrupt Governor of New York who abuses his power to conceal his patronage of prostitutes and his wife paying for a murder.
He was portrayed by Tom Everett Scott.
Overview[]
Shalvoy is the young, charismatic Governor of New York. He is very popular with his constituents and well-connected with New York's power players and has ambitions for higher office.
Beneath his charm and idealistic public image, however, he is corrupt, greedy, and completely ruthless, willing to bend, and even break the law, to get what he wants. He and his equally ambitious, amoral wife Rita have two sons, but neither of them cares about each other or their children, seeing their family as mere campaign props.
Biography[]
Shalvoy at first seems to be an ally of the Manhattan District Attorney's office, pulling strings to get Jack McCoy appointed interim District Attorney of New York County after his predecessor, Arthur Branch, retires. He and McCoy work closely together on the former's crime bill, and Shalvoy helps McCoy convict Donna Cheponis for fraud and murder.
During an NYPD investigation of a murder tied to an escort service, however, McCoy recognizes Shalvoy's voice on a wiretap recording of a prostitute talking to a client. When McCoy tells Shalvoy that his office is investigating him and his dalliances with prostitutes will soon become public knowledge, Shalvoy threatens to fire him. McCoy refuses to be intimidated, however, and has his Executive Assistant District Attorney, Michael Cutter, serve Shalvoy with a subpeona. Enraged, Shalvoy tells McCoy he will not support his campaign for District Attorney, instead supporting his opponent, Joe Chappell.
Shalvoy conspires with Rita to get the murderer, Frank Beezley, to plead guilty by promising to commute his sentence later on. Shalvoy then bribes officials in the U.S. Justice Department to drop the case, has one of the prostitutes he frequents deported by ICE, and moves the prostitute's boyfriend into witness protection to keep him from testifying.
During an investigation of the murder of a confidential informant, McCoy discovers that Shalvoy had surveillance tapes of the murder "misplaced" in order to protect the murderer, Sheriff John Burkhart of Dargerville, New York, one of his political cronies. McCoy confronts him, but Shalvoy insists that the tapes were lost by accident. He then makes a veiled threat against McCoy by telling him not to "humiliate" himself by pursuing the case. Eventually, however, Shalvoy pacifies McCoy by having the missing footage "recovered" and cutting Burkhart loose, allowing McCoy, Cutter, and Assistant District Attorney Connie Rubirosa to convict him. Shalvoy also makes political hay out of Burkhart's conviction by holding a press conference announcing that the District Attorney's office - led by Chapell - will investigate every case that Burkhart was involved in.
Rita later hires an assassin to kill Senator Charles Whitley, who is under investigation for paying for the same prostitutes that Shalvoy patronizes, in order to install the Shalvoys' crony Thea Curry as his replacement and take over Curry's politically connected nonprofit foundation. It is implied that Shalvoy is complicit in the murder, or at least knows about it. When the investigation implicates Rita, McCoy gets a grand jury to indict Shalvoy for covering up the murder to use as leverage to force him to testify against his wife. Shalvoy refuses, but then offers to buy McCoy off with information that would damage Chapell's campaign, an offer that McCoy turns down.
McCoy, Cutter, and Rubirosa meet with Shalvoy and Rita, and have the latter arrested. Cutter privately shows Shalvoy a list of the prostitutes he had sex with, along with dates and places, and offers to let him resign with his reputation intact in return for getting out of McCoy's way concerning Rita's prosecution. Shalvoy announces his resignation that day and publicly claims to support Rita in the face of the charges against her; when McCoy is elected District Attorney, however, Shalvoy does nothing to stop him from prosecuting Rita and putting her in prison.
Shalvoy then presumably retires from public life.
Trivia[]
- Shalvoy is loosely based on Elliot Spitzer, the former Governor of New York, who resigned in 2008 after he was caught patronizing an escort service,
External links[]
- Donald Shalvoy on the Law & Order Wiki
