  |
This article's content is marked as Mature The page contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, and/or graphic violent images which may be disturbing to some. Mature pages are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older. If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page. |
| “ | Lawyers! You are turning this great country into a cesspool, and for what? He set me up! He sent that Jew lawyer in here, all along trying to entrap me! That's gotta be illegal! | „ |
| ~ Pruese accusing Jack McCoy and Danielle Melnick of setting him up. |
Julian Pruese is the main antagonist of the Law & Order episode "Open Season". He is a white supremacist vigilante who murders lawyers who represent clients whom he believes are "betraying the Aryan race".
He is portrayed by Garret Dillahunt, who also portrayed Kevin O'Donnell in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Ty Walker in Justified, Krug Stillo in the 2010 remake of The Last House on the Left, Steve Curtis in ER, John Gavenue in Burning Bright, and Mason Turner in Criminal Minds.
Early life[]
Pruese is the leader of a white supremacist group called the American Patriot Union that has ties to domestic terrorists. He was the right-hand man of the group's founder, Steven LeClerc, until LeClerc was imprisoned for life for the attempted murder of a federal judge. Pruese took over the group, laundering their funds through his barbecue sauce business.
Pruese also began stalking defense attorneys who represented clients he believed were "traitors to the white race" because they represented clients he did not like. He compiled all their personal information on his Palm Pilot, and began planning to kill them all, using his network of fellow neo-Nazis as assassins.
"Open Season"[]
After defense attorney Vance Grodie wins an acquittal for a Black man charged with the attempted murder of a police officer, Pruese follows him to a bar where he is throwing a victory party and shoots him dead.
NYPD Homicide Detectives Lennie Briscoe and Ed Green investigate Grodie's murder, eventually discovering that the American Patriot Union had been publishing articles calling for his death. They question Pruese, and find that he has the same kind of firearm used to kill Grodie and drives a car similar to one seen in the vicinity of the crime scene, and arrest him. Meanwhile, Assistant District Attorney Serena Southerlyn goes to American Patriot Union headquarters posing as a white supremacist, and tricks Pruese's employee Thalia Raye Phillips into revealing that Pruese had used her computer to write and print the articles calling for Grodie's murder.
Southerlyn and Executive Assistant District Attorney Jack McCoy try Pruese for second-degree murder, while Pruesse is represented by Danielle Melnick, an idealistic defense attorney and McCoy's friend of 20 years. At Pruese's arraignment, the judge orders that he cannot communicate with anyone other than Melnick, for fear that he will order further murders. Melnick believes that this order is unconstitutional, however, and so sends messages to Pruese's friends and family - unaware that these messages are, in fact, orders to kill people on his enemies list. As a result of one such order, one of Pruese's flunkies murders the ADA who put LeClerc in prison.
McCoy and Southerlyn listen in on a meeting between Pruese and Melnick and witness him giving her more names of people to contact. Believing that Melnick unwittingly helped Pruese kill someone, McCoy reluctantly tells her to turn herself in to avoid the embarrassment of being arrested. Melnick insists she had no idea what Pruese was trying to do and pleads not guilty to conspiracy charges, but she refuses to testify against Pruese because it would violate attorney-client privilege.
Following District Attorney Arthur Branch's advice that lying for a friend is not always a bad thing, McCoy decides to trick Pruese into pleading guilty and exonerating Melnick. He and Southerlyn meet with Pruese, now represented by a new lawyer, and tell him that Melnick has confessed to helping him kill the judge, and that he has two choices: Plead guilty to murder and go to prison for life or plead guilty to manslaughter and serve 13 years in prison, on the condition that he testifies that Melnick did not know what he was going to do. Pruese curses McCoy and Melnick - attacking the latter, who is Jewish, with anti-Semitic slurs - but reluctantly accepts the deal.
While Melnick is exonerated, however, Pruese ultimately gets his revenge against her; on his orders, Phillips ambushes Melnick and shoots her several times. Melnick survives, but is severely injured; in her next appearance, she is seen walking with great difficulty on crutches. Phillips is convicted of attempted murder, while Pruese begins his prison sentence under the plea bargain.
External links[]
- Julian Pruese on the Law & Order Wiki
